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Albert, King of the Belgians 



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THE ^yAYFAR£FLS LIBRARY 



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THE WAR LORDS 



A. G. Gardiner 



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LONDON & TORONTO 

J.M.DENT & SONS, Ltd. 

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To 

A. S. G. 

Far off and faint, as echoes of a dream. 
The songs of boyhood seem." 



BY THE SAME 
AUTHOR 

PROPHETS 
PRIESTS 
AND KINGS 



PILLARS OF 
SOCIETY 



PREFACE 

In this book an attempt is made to consider the 
origins, issues, and conduct of the war in the light 
of the personalities of the principal actors. The 
influence of men upon events is always a deeply in- 
teresting subject, but in the world tragedy of to-day 
that influence is a matter of practical concern as well 
as of intellectual curiosity. As Hazlitt, a century ago, 
saw " The Spirit of the Age " in its representative 
men, so we may to-day see " The Spirit of the War " 
working through the principals whom events have 
brought into the fierce light that plays upon the 
European stage. Unlike previous books by the same 
author, the object is not, primarily, the elucidation of 
character, but the relation of character to specific 
events, and the scope of the treatment therefore is 
enlarged to include those events. Many of the articles 
have appeared in The Daily News, The Atlantic 
Monthly, and Pearson's Magazine, and reflect in some 
measure the spirit and circumstances of the moment 
at which they were written. In certain respects the 
circumstances have changed. For example, M. Veni- 
zelos has been restored by the people of Greece to 
power. It has, however, been thought well to repro- 
duce the articles substantially in their original form. 

A. G. G. 

Hampstead, June 191 5. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

i . The Kaiser — And the Origins of the War . . 7 

2. King Albert — And the Tragedy of Belgium . 41 

3. The Asquith Cabinets — And the Spirit of 

England . . . . . . -57 

4. General Joffre — And. the Spirit of France . 103 

5. Francis Joseph — And the Spirit of Serbia . . 116 

6. The Grand Duke Nicholas — And the Tragedy of 

Poland . . . . . . .131 

7. King Victor Emmanuel — And the Spirit of Italy 149 

8. General Botha — And the Spirit of the Empire . 160 

9. King Gustav of Sweden ..... 176 

10. Field-Marshal von Hindenburg . . .188 

1 1 . Lord Fisher — And the Spirit of the Navy . . 197 

12. The Crown Prince of Prussia . . . . 213 

13. King Nicholas ...... 224 

14. King Ferdinand — And the Tragedy of the Balkans 232 

15. General Bernhardi — And the Spirit of Germany 248 

16. Sir John French — And British Generalship . 268 

17. Sir John Jellicoe ...... 288 

18. Karl Liebknecht — And the German Democracy. 296 

19. President Wilson — And the Spirit of the United 

States 310 

20. M. Venizelos . . - . - • 3(8 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY 
CLIVE GARDINER 



Albert, King of the Belgians 




Frontispiece i 


The Kaiser ...... 


Facing page 


33 ! 


H. H. Asquith ..... 






48 


General Joffre ..... 






107 


Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria- 








Hungary ..... 






118 


^The Grand Duke Nicholas 




,, 


131 


General Botha ..... 




,, 


161 


General von Hinderburg 




,, 


192 


• Lord Fisher ...... 




,, 


197 


The Crown Prince of Prussia 




„ 


220 


(From the photograph of Stanley's Press Ageitcy.) 




1 


Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria 




,, 


233 


i General von Bernhardi 






248 


Sir John French ..... 




,, 


268 


Sir John Jellicoe . . . 




M 


288 


M. Venizelos ..... 




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321 ; 




THE KAISER 

AND THE ORIGINS OF THE WAR 



I. DIVINE RIGHT 

It is said, on such high authority that the statement 
is entitled to respect, that on the fatal Saturday when 
he signed the declaration of war against Russia the 
Kaiser, having written his signature, threw the pen 
across the table and said to the triumphant soldiers 
around him, " Gentlemen, you will live to regret 
this." And those who saw the council break up have 
described how, as he emerged, Count von Moltke 
made to certain colleagues outside a sign with seven 
figures indicating the word " Wilhelm." The long 
struggle was over and the soldiers had dragged their 
victim over the precipice. That is the general reading 
of events. But the time has not yet come to ascertain 
with any clearness the part which the Kaiser played 
in the drama that preceded the war. Was the Nor- 
wegian cruise which was taken after the Serajevo 
murders a blind intended to lull the suspicions of the 
outside world, or was it a desperate attempt to escape 
from the net that the military party had woven 
around him ? What was his action in the interval and 
what was the precise significance of that message from 

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The War Lords 

Sir H. Rumbold to Sir E. Grey published in the White 
Paper referring to the Kaiser's sudden return from 
Norway ? Why was the Berlin Foreign Office alarmed 
by that return? On this point there is an incident, 
told in well-informed circles, that is illuminating. 
When the Crown Prince heard of the return from 
Norway he said to one of the military cabal, " William 
is back; but he is too late." It is the opinion of 
those in this country most intimate with the inner 
history of the diplomatic struggle that culminated 
in the war that both the Kaiser and his chancellor 
wanted peace, but that the accession of the Crown 
Prince to the war party made their resistance in- 
effectual. " Let us be just to Bethmann-Hollweg," 
said a distinguished Foreign Office representative 
when the conduct of the chancellor was being criti- 
cised. " You only see his failure. We have seen when 
he has not failed — when he has fought for peace and 
won. He fought for peace this time, but lost." And 
so with the Kaiser. The indictment that history will 
make against him will not be that he wanted war, 
but that his policy was fatal to the cause of peace. 
For years he had been increasingly unpopular with 
the military faction, who regarded him as a coward 
and as the obstacle to the war which was their dream. 
There is negative evidence in the Yellow Book that 
up to August of 1913 he was considered by the 
French Foreign Office to be an influence for peace. 
The record there of the memorable interview of the 
Kaiser and Von Moltke with King Albert comments 
on the change which was apparent in the attitude of 
the Kaiser. Hitherto he had commanded the con- 
fidence of the French Ambassador at Berlin; now it 
was clear that he was weakening in his resistance to 
the military conspiracy. 

8 



The Kaiser 

But even later the battle for the Kaiser was in 
doubt. Whatever may be said of Herr Ballin's actions 
since the war began, it will not be denied that he, 
like the commercial class generally, was anxious for 
peace, if not on any lofty ground then on the low 
ground of self-interest. He had everything to lose and 
nothing to gain by war. Moreover, he knew perhaps 
better than any one else in Germany the temper of 
this country, for it was in the city of London that 
he had learned the lessons that enabled him to build 
up the great mercantile marine of Germany, and but 
for an accident of circumstance he might have been 
the Napoleon of the shipping trade in England instead 
of in Germany. Outside the official circle he is the 
most intimate friend of the Kaiser, and he may be 
assumed to have been as familiar as any one with the 
workings of his mind at this critical time. In Novem- 
ber 1 913 Herr Ballin was asked by an English friend 
what the Kaiser really meant — was it war or peace ? 
" I really cannot say," was his reply. " It is like this. 
We are shouting ' Peace ' into one ear and the soldiers 
are shouting ' War ' into the other ear. And which 
shout will prevail it is impossible to say." 

The difficulty was increased by his incalculable 
character. The French have a saying about a certain 
type of man that he has " a devil in the body." That 
saying is singularly applicable to the Kaiser. He is 
afflicted with the colossal egotism of one who feels 
that the whole universe is revolving round his godlike 
personality. His temperament is that of the stage, and 
wherever he moves the limelight follows him. The 
impression he creates in personal contact is one of 
enormous energy and mental alertness, of power 
wayward and uncertain, but fused with a spark of 
genius, of a temperament of high nervous force 

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bordering on disease. The movements of his mind are 
sudden and shattering, governed by mood and by 
an autocratic impulse that baffles calculation. He is 
responsive to every emotional appeal and his laughter 
is as careless as a boy's, but it is laughter that you 
cannot trust, for it may change to lightning at a 
word. The spur of the moment drives him, and the 
telegram form is the symbol of his thought. Nothing 
illustrates this impatience and subjection to impulse 
more than the circumstance of the famous Kruger 
telegram, which was launched at this country in a 
spasm of anger with the late Lord Salisbury. " The 
world " (if I may quote from something I wrote of 
the Kaiser after meeting him some ten years ago) 
" distrusts the artistic temperament in affairs. It 
prefers the stolid man who thinks slowly and securely 
and acts with deliberation. It likes a man whose 
mental processes it can follow and understand, a man 
of the type of the late Duke of Devonshire, solid, 
honest, and not the least bit clever. There is the root 
of the disquiet with which the Kaiser has been 
regarded for twenty years. He is a man of moods and 
impulses, an artist to his ringer tips, astonishingly 
versatile, restless, and unnerving. He keeps his 
audience in a state of tense expectation. Any moment, 
it feels, a spark from this incandescent personality 
may drop into the powder magazine/' 

But if his personality made his actions incalculable, 
his political doctrine gave them a definite and fatal 
direction. What that doctrine is we have had abund- 
ant evidence from his own lips, for there has been no 
more talkative monarch in our own or any time. 
During the quarter of a century that he has reigned 
he has delivered more than a thousand public or 
semi-public speeches, and as one reads them in the 



The Kaiser 

collected form in the volume edited by Mr. Christian 
Gauss, the mind of the Kaiser is revealed with extra- 
ordinary clearness and definition. It is said that 
words are made to conceal thought. That may be 
true. But they do not conceal personality, and the 
cumulative effect of these speeches has the quality of 
a piece of self-portraiture that is final and convincing. 
It may not shed light upon whether the Kaiser wanted 
the war or was forced into it by the military party 
and the Crown Prince. But as one reads and sees the 
real Kaiser shaping himself one feels that, whether he 
wanted it or not, he was the artificer of war. In all our 
complexities there is a central core which is the real 
man. It may be difficult to discover it, but it is always 
there and it is always ultimately operative. " Truth/' 
said Ruskin, " is polygonal. I never feel sure that I 
have got it until I have contradicted myself five or 
six times.' ' And the contradictions of the Kaiser's 
personality are many more than five or six. And yet 
in these speeches they are resolved into a unity so 
simple and decisive that it seems strange that his 
versatility should have obscured the central drift of 
his character and policy. War was not, perhaps, his 
deliberate purpose, but it was his destiny. 

It was implicit in his doctrine. The keynote of that 
doctrine drums through his speeches as the note 
drummed in the head of Schumann in the days of 
his insanity. Indeed, it is so persistent, so extravagant, 
so unrelieved by any touch of humour, as to suggest 
insanity. That note is the divinity of his kingship. 
The world has travelled so far from the doctrine of 
divine right that it is not easy to conceive the mind 
in which it still lives as a reality. But in the mind of 
the Kaiser it is a reality that consumes everything 
else in its fierce fire. He believes that his house is the 

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divinely appointed instrument of God made to lead the 
German nation to redeem the earth as absolutely as 
Moses wasraisedto lead the chosen people out of Egypt. 
" Then,' ' he says at Minister in 1907, "then the German 
people will be the rock of granite upon which our 
Lord God can build and complete his culture in the 
world." He sees the cloud by day and the pillar of 
fire by night. And out of the cloud the Almighty is 
speaking to him, William, His servant and confidant. 
Hence the constant and familiar allusions to God. 
There is not a speech in which His name does not 
appear, and it is always employed with that note of 
familiarity which the confidential servant uses in 
speaking of the master who is even more friend and 
colleague than master. The claim of divine appoint- 
ment is not held timidly or asserted vaguely. It is 
declared openly and defiantly. Thus at Konigsberg 
in 1910 he says : 

" And here my grandfather, again, by his own right, set 
the Prussian crown upon his head, once more emphasising 
the fact that it was accorded him by the will of God alone 
and not by Parliament or by any assemblage of the people 
or by popular vote, and that he thus looked upon himself 
as the chosen instrument of Heaven and as such performed 
his duties as Regent and Sovereign." 

Even that cynical atheist, Frederick the Great, was 
the servant of God, for it was in reference to him 
that the Kaiser said: "And just as the great king 
was never left in the lurch by the old Ally, so the 
Fatherland and this beautiful province will always 
be near His heart." Here one sees that terrible 
absence of humour that is the real disease of the man. 
He has never laughed at himself. He has never seen 
himself, in Falstaff's phrase, " like a forked radish 
carved out of cheese-parings after supper." He is 
afflicted with a frightful gravity about himself that 

12 



The Kaiser 

is in itself a form of madness. " I regard my whole 
position," he tells the representatives of Brandenburg, 
" as given to me direct from Heaven and that I have 
been called by the Highest to do His work." Some- 
times, indeed, even the Almighty is subordinated. 
" Suprema lex regis voluntas " he writes in the Golden 
Book of Munich. He takes nothing for granted, but 
declares his omnipotence on all occasions with a 
childish vanity. " My Church, of which I am summits 
epi ' scopus," he says in lecturing the office-bearers on 
their duties. And again, " There is only one master 
in this country. That am I. Who opposes me I shall 
crush to pieces." 

It would be a mistake to suppose from all this that 
his motive is ambition. His pride out-soars ambition. 
That quality is the attribute of ordinary humanity,, 
and the Kaiser no more thinks of himself in the terms 
of ordinary humanity than you and I think of our- 
selves in the terms of the troglodyte. If you prick 
him he knows that he will bleed, and if you tickle him 
he knows that he will laugh. In this he is human, 
but in his mission he is divine. And that divinity 
cannot be delegated. Hence his repudiation of Bis- 
marck. Hence, too, those constant references to 
William " the Great." The idea that it was Bismarck 
who was the creator of modern Germany was an insult 
to the divinity of the house of Hohenzollern. It was 
an insult to the Almighty. It must be corrected by 
raising his grandfather to the skies where old William, 
who was really a modest and sensible man and hated 
war, never sought to intrude. And so we have the 
constant insistence on William " the Great." 

This vision of himself as divine leads straight to 
other vital consequences. It governs his conception 
of the state and his relation to the people. Since he 

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is the august instrument of the Almighty it follows 
that the government is upon his shoulders, and not 
the government alone but even opinion, taste, and 
religious belief. Hence his deliverances on art and 
music, literature and theology, his sermons and his 
moral discourses. They have all, together with their 
crude and shallow brilliancy, a Sinaitic seriousness 
as of one who does not speak as a man but as a god. 
In these things, the deification of himself is amusing. 
It is when we come to his attitude towards the State 
that it leads to blood and iron. He sees in demo- 
cracy the spirit of rebellion against himself and 
against the Almighty. He is the law-giver of the 
Germans as Moses was the lawgiver of Israel, and 
these demands for liberty, this unrest of Labour are 
the motions of people who are following strange gods 
and must be chastised with scorpions. What have 
they to do with the law, except obey it ? Is not the 
government placed in his hands by God and will he 
not be faithful to the divine task imposed on him ? 

And so he lectures the strikers at Berlin or Breslau 
like an avenging angel, and denounces the Socialists 
like a Property Defence League advocate. Thus : 

" For to me every Social Democrat is synonymous with an 
enemy of the realm and of the Fatherland. Should I, there- 
fore, discover that Social Democratic tendencies become 
involved in the agitation and instigate unlawful opposition, 
I will step in sternly and ruthlessly and bring to bear all 
the power I possess — and it is great." (Berlin, 1889.) 

And again — this time to the working men of Breslau 
n 1902: 

" For years you and your brothers have allowed your- 
selves to be deluded by the agitators of the Socialists into 
thinking that if you do not belong to this party and acknow- 
ledge it no one pays any attention to you and that you will 

14 



The Kaiser 

i not be in a position to obtain a hearing for your just interests 
in the amelioration of your condition. 

" That is a gross lie and a serious error. Instead of repre- 
senting you directly, the agitators seek to stir you up against 
your employers, against the other classes, against the throne 
and against the church. . . . And to what end is this power 
used ? Not for furthering your welfare but for sowing hatred 
between the classes and for disseminating cowardly slanders 
that respect nothing sacred ; and finally, they hare outraged 
the Almighty Himself." 

From this absolutist attitude to the state there 
follows the fact that his sole reliance is on the army. 
He not only does not ask for the sanction of the people : 
he repudiates it. He is not a constitutional king, 
but the Supreme War Lord, and he governs not by 
consent but by the power of the sword. If his people 
are good he will be kind to them; if they are dis- 
obedient he will flog them and shoot them. Through- 
out his speeches the glitter of the sword is as constant 
as the name of God. Indeed the two words are almost 
interchangeable. Even when he makes a gift to the 
great Minister whom he has discarded and outraged 
it takes the form of a sword, and he says : 

" I could find no better token than a sword, this noblest 
symbol of the Germans; a symbol of that instrument which 
your Highness with my late grandfather helped to shape, to 
sharpen, and also to wield ; the symbol of that great, power- 
ful period of building whose mortar was blood and iron; 
that weapon which is never dismayed and which, when 
necessary, in the hands of kings and princes, will defend 
against internal foes that unity of the Fatherland which it 
had once conquered from the foes without." 

" Internal foes." Again and again that threat of the 
army against his own people if they are disobedient 
recurs like a refrain. It is to the army that he looks 
to preserve his throne and suppress the rebellious. 
In the first words he addressed to it — three days before 

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The War Lords 

he troubled to send a message to his people — he 
declared : 

" The absolutely inviolable dependence upon the War 
Lord (Kriegsherr) is in the army, the inheritance of which 
descends from father to son, from generation to generation. 
... So are we bound together — I and the Army — so are we 
born for one another, and so shall we hold together indis- 
solubly, whether, as God wills, we are to have peace or 
storm." 

The army is his own private inheritance. It is the 
sole pillar, as he says in another speech, upon which 
his empire rests. Now let us see what is his view of 
its functions. He is addressing the recruits to the 
Regiment of the Guard on their swearing in at 
Potsdam in 1891. Three renderings of the speech are 
on record. They do not vary essentially, but I 
quote that taken from the Neisser Zeitung : 

" Recruits! You have now before the consecrated servant 
of the Lord, and before His altar sworn fealty to me. You 
are still too young to understand the true meaning of what 
has just been said; but be diligent now and follow the 
directions and instructions given you. You have sworn 
loyalty to me; that means, children of my guard, that you 
are now my soldiers; you have given yourselves up to me, 
body and soul; there is for you but one enemy and that is 
my enemy. In view of the present Socialistic agitations it may 
come to pass that I shall command you to shoot your own 
relatives, brothers, yes, parents — which God forbid — but even 
then you must follow my command without a murmur." 

And now out of his own mouth we have got the full 
doctrine of kingship. It is stated over and over again, 
always with the same fearless directness and lucidity, 
for among his many gifts is a distinct skill in pictur- 
esque oratory. The doctrine is this : (1) he is Emperor 
and King by divine right, by the direct election of 
God; (2) the state is his family property, to be 
administered justly but with absolute freedom from 
interference, criticism, or attack; (3) the weapon of 

16 



The Kaiser 

government is the sword of the army which is the 
private inheritance of his family, and the purpose of 
which is to smite down his internal enemies as well 
as his external enemies. 

The doctrine sounds like the gospel of the mad- 
house ; but it is absolutely sincere, like so much that 
one hears in the madhouse. Nor is it an empty creed. 
On the contrary, it is the creed that has governed 
Germany and out of which the war came. For in 
order to make his gospel possible, even with the help 
of his army, he had to turn his people's eyes to other 
lands and to whet their appetites with the lust of 
conquest. The social reforms that Bismarck had 
introduced to keep the people quiet had exhausted 
their influence. A new motif must be found or the old 
rebellious passion — the old demand for liberty within 
— which had been suppressed since 1848 would be 
irresistible. And so in his speeches we trace side be- 
side with the gospel of divine right, the gospel of 
Weltmacht. Germany is to have " its place in the 
sun." The German Michel is to go forth in shining 
armour and with "mailed fist," carrying the culture 
of the Fatherland into the darkness without and 
adding to the glory of the house of Hohenzollern and 
of their " powerful Ally, the old, good God (der alte, 
gute Gott) in heaven, who, ever since the time of the 
Great Elector and of the great king, has always been 
on our side." And seeing that Weltmacht is ultimately 
only another name for naval power, he starts the 
great naval policy and declares — with that aptness 
for the adequate phrase that he always shows — that 
" our future lies upon the water " (Stettin, 1898). 

And so he keeps his people quiet, now flattering 
them with visions of " a German world empire and 
of a Hohenzollern world ruler " (Bremen, 1905), now 

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brandishing his hereditary sword in the face of the 
insurgent Socialists. The undercurrent throughout 
is the thought of the internal menace to his absolute 
rule. In resisting that menace he was driven into 
courses that had only one goal. The alternative to 
democratic freedom at home was the policy of the 
high hand abroad, and though he did not desire war 
he was prepared to invite it with the external enemies 
of the state rather than with the internal enemies of 
his despotism. Surrender to the Socialists was an 
unthinkable humiliation. It was more. It was dis- 
loyalty to " the old, good God " who had been the 
family Ally so long. And so he sharpened his sword 
and drifted towards Niagara, and to-day he is not 
fighting the Socialists. They are fighting for him. 
They are falling in thousands and tens of thousands 
and hundreds of thousands to exalt the house they 
hate and the man who has treated them as his per- 
sonal enemies. It is the strangest irony in all the 
history of war. 

Perhaps the Kaiser is mad. Pride such as his is 
hardly consistent with sanity. But certainly the 
peoples of Europe will be mad if, after this frightful 
lesson, they do not make an end on the earth for ever 
of the doctrine of the divine right of kings. 



II. THE CURSE OF BISMARCK 

If we see in this denial of popular liberty and this 
assertion of absolutism, based on the power of the 
sword, the real clue to the war, we shall find the evil 
genius of Germany in the man whose centenary falls 
so fittingly in the midst of the catastrophe that marked 
the fulfilment of his policy. For without Bismarck 
the despotism of the Kaiser would have been impos- 

18 



The Kaiser 

sible. It is true that the Kaiser repudiated the old 
minister as ruthlessly as Henry V. repudiated Fal- 
staff and subjected him to the grossest indignities. 
But that was because, like most kings, he hated the 
sense of obligation and because he would have " no 
rival near the throne." He would be king not in form 
but in fact. He would be absolute in war and in 
statecraft, and would have about him flunkeys to do 
his bidding, not men to dispute his judgment. And 
it is true also that the policy of the Kaiser departed 
very startlingly from that of the old chancellor who 
did not talk sounding bombast about Weltmacht, and 
who declared that the Balkans were not worth the 
bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. But, never- 
theless, the high- vaulting schemes of the Kaiser were 
the natural fruit of the Bismarckian tree, and the 
great adventure of to-day was latent in the policy of 
the iron chancellor. 

It was a coincidence for the curious that brought 
the great Prussian upon the stage at the moment 
that the great Corsican was leaving it. Ten days 
before that April i, 1815, Napoleon had reached 
Paris from Elba, and three months later he met his 
final overthrow at Waterloo. His star went down 
never to rise again ; but in the north another star as 
blood-red was coming up over the horizon. To-day 
that star, too, we hope is setting over those same 
fields of Flanders where Napoleonism perished a 
hundred years ago. 

What are the thoughts of Germany as it celebrates 
the centenary of the man who fashioned it with blood 
and iron? Will it see in this war the triumph of his 
policy , or will it see in it the failure of his successors to 
follow his astute diplomacy? It is a commonplace 
of contemporary criticism that Bismarck would not 

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have suffered Germany to be encircled by enemies. 
He never under-estimated his possible foes, never 
cultivated a reckless vanity, always insured and re- 
insured himself against contingencies, above all, 
never swerved from his root maxim, " keep friends 
with Russia." That was the keynote of his policy, 
and the injunction which the old King, his master, 
■uttered from his death-bed to his grandson, " Never 
lose touch with the Tsar," was only the echo of that 
policy. The friendship of England also was his 
constant aim, not because he loved England, for 
England like France was the home of that democratic 
spirit that he hated, but because his ambitions did 
not bring him into conflict with England, and he was 
not the man to make an enemy where he could make 
a friend. 

But all the same the war is the sequel to the work 
of Bismarck, and is true to the spirit of that remarkable 
man. In him Prussianism reached its highest expres- 
sion; but it did not reach the limits of its dream. 
Each century since the eighteenth has seen the 
horizon of that dream widened, and though Bismarck 
himself had neither colonial nor naval ambitions the 
claim of Prussia to-day to " World Power " is only 
the expansion of that idea of dominion that he 
inherited from Frederick the Great. 

His relation to the events of to-day can best be 
understood by briefly recalling the facts of the Ger- 
many that he found and the Germany that he founded. 
When he was in his cradle a hundred years ago the 
German nation had just emerged from the nightmare 
of Napoleon. In a very real sense it was Napoleon 
who gave the Germans a national consciousness and 
paved the way for Bismarck. It is true that, even 
after the overthrow of Napoleon, the German nation 



The Kaiser 

still lacked political unity. It was divided into 
multitudes of independent states and free cities; 
but the humiliation of the Napoleonic irruption had 
discovered the solidarity of sentiment that underlay 
all separatisms, and the teaching of Fichte, the songs 
of Korner, the educational fervour of Stein, and the 
military genius of Schamhorst had given an impulse 
to unity that only awaited the man and the moment. 

The movement towards unity could only come from 
one of two sources — from the Habsburgs of Austria 
who had made themselves great by marriage, or the 
Hohenzollerns of Prussia who had made themselves 
great by the sword. Before Germany could be con- 
solidated the rivalry of Austria and Prussia must be 
settled. Frederick in the eighteenth century had first 
challenged the supremacy of Austria and laid the 
foundations of the greatness of Prussia (that Slav 
wilderness which the knights of the Teutonic Order 
had wrested from the heathen in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries). It is one of the ironies of 
history that it was with the help of the sea power of 
this countiy r that Frederick won his treacherous duel 
with Maria Theresa of Austria. In those days we were 
prepared to ally ourselves with any power which 
would help to check the ambitions of France, and the 
King of Prussia was more popular in England than 
our own king. Even to-day the public-house sign of 
the " King of Prussia," with its cocked hat and 
pigtail, is a familiar reminder of the time when we 
were helping to make Prussia great. 

Out of the welter of the Napoleonic wars and the 
intrigues of the Vienna Congress, Prussia emerged 
with new territorial gains, among them those rich 
Rhinelands that became the source of its industrial 
greatness and strengthened its arm for its next adven- 

21 



The War Lords 

ture. The great end that Prussia had in view, the 
conquest of Germany, was now well in sight, but first 
Austria must be brushed aside. There came a momen- 
tary diversion with the revolutionary outbreak of 
1848, which led to the Frankfort Constitution and 
the pale semblance of German unity on the basis of 
free institutions. It collapsed, and no one rejoiced 
more than young Bismarck, with his hatred of demo- 
cracy and his passion for the " Christian monarchy " 
of his ideal, embodied in the kingship of Prussia. 

His advent to power in 1862 was a portent. Parlia- 
ment had refused the king money for the reorganisa- 
tion of the army, and the king, much against his will, 
called in this formidable man as chief minister to help 
him to overawe his people. His first speech as minister 
gave the keynote to that policy of brutal aggression 
for which Prussia has become synonymous. " The 
German question," he said, " cannot be settled by 
speeches or Parliamentary decrees, but only by 
blood and iron." For four years he ruled without a 
Budget and crushed the opposition under his iron 
heel, while he prepared his great scheme for making 
the Prussian monarchy master of Germany. 

He had marked Austria down for slaughter, and 
with diabolical cunning and treachery first involved 
her as an accomplice in the theft of Schleswig-Holstein, 
and then used that incident as a cause of quarrel. 
But he delayed his blow in 1865 in order to insure 
himself by securing the neutrality of Italy and France. 
That done he launched his bolt and in six or seven 
weeks Austria was at his feet. But he would not allow 
the king to make any territorial annexation, for he 
wanted Austria as his friend in the next act of his 
drama. He had sought the neutrality of France to 
help him to overthrow Austria; now he needed the 



The Kaiser 

quiescence of Austria to help him to overthrow 
France. He knew that Napoleon III. would not 
allow him to complete his conquest of Germany 
without a struggle, and for that struggle he now 
prepared. And Napoleon and his preposterous 
Foreign Minister Grammont made the task easy. 
Napoleon attempted to avert the storm by a scheme of 
mutual plunder. Benedetti, the French ambassador 
at Berlin, put before Bismarck a proposal by which 
Prussia should be allowed to incorporate the South 
German states in the new Northern Confederation, 
while France should be allowed to annex Belgium 
and Luxemburg. Bismarck smiled. That was not 
his way of achieving German unity. He must not 
steal the German States with the help of France : he 
must give the German States a common quarrel with 
France and out of that quarrel bring them into his 
net. But he kept Benedetti's draft and duly pub- 
lished it in The Times in order to keep English opinion 
right at the outbreak of war. 

His opportunity came with the question of the 
Spanish succession ; but the unwillingness of the king 
to engage in another war almost defeated his aims. 
Grammont, however, came to Bismarck's rescue. 
When William had yielded on the succession question, 
the ridiculous French minister sought to convert his 
diplomatic victory into a rout. He demanded that 
the King of Prussia should undertake not to raise 
the question again. William did not want to fight, 
but neither did he want to be humiliated. He wrote 
the famous Ems telegram, and Bismarck, seizing his 
opportunity, doctored it in such a way as to make 
the war he desired unavoidable. And out of that war 
he emerged with his prize. At Versailles he brought 
the German Empire to birth and made the King of 

23 



The War Lords 

Prussia its master, and the Prussian spirit its 
dictator. 

The free German peoples had been welded at last, 
but they had lost their freedom in winning their unity. 
They had been conquered by the fierce knights of the 
Teutonic Order, and absorbed in a state which knew 
nothing of democracy or freedom and rested frankly 
on the army, and whose King was the Supreme War 
Lord of an ancient fighting caste. In a word, the 
current of German life instead of swelling the tide of 
liberty had been turned back into the channels of 
Caesarism. Germany, in becoming powerful, had 
become divorced from the movement of Western 
Europe, and the triumph of Bismarck's policy crushed 
every instinct of freedom in the dust. The Emperor 
reigned not by consent of his people, but in virtue of 
the army which he alone controlled. Parliamentary 
institutions were a jest, and the most powerful 
political party in the country — the Social Democrats 
— were openly reviled by the Kaiser as the enemies 
of the Fatherland. 

The maintenance of such a system in the heart of 
the modern world could only be secured by conquests 
and more conquests. If Prussia was to endure it 
must Prussianise not only Germany but Europe and 
the world. And so, out of the triumph of Bismarck, 
there came the new dream of sea power and world 
power and the preparation for an adventure more 
vast than that of Frederick or of Bismarck. And 
caught in the toils of the military machine, and 
dazzled by the sudden success which their genius for 
organisation had brought them, the people became 
obsessed by the theory of the super-race. 

They came to worship the machine of Might, and 
since they could not free themselves from its tyranny, 

24 



The Kaiser 

compromised by believing that they would du other 
people good by bringing them under its tyranny 
also. And with splendid self-deception they called 
the tyranny " Kultur." With their natural tendency 
to abstract thinking they were hypnotised by the 
idea of the state, and patriotism which to other 
peoples is an instinct and a warm-blooded passion 
became to them a cold philosophy, an arid creed, 
formulated by crabbed professors and learned in the 
schoolroom like a multiplication table or a Greek verb. 
The triumph of Bismarck, in short, in imposing the 
chains of Prussianism on Germany led straight to the 
world catastrophe of to-day. He gave the German 
nation unity and power; but he denied it freedom, 
and in denying it freedom perverted its soul. Had 
his policy been less successful in a material sense, the 
impulse of the people towards internal liberty would 
have been more powerful and would ultimately have 
overthrown the militarist despotism. But Bismarck's 
imperialism was astonishingly successful, and demo- 
cratic sentiment failing to overthrow the iron god of 
his creation was turned aside to grind the mills of its 
purpose. Unable to destroy the monster, the people 
fell under its enchantment. The war will lift the spell 
from them. It will smash the idol of blood and iron 
and release the spirit of Germany from the curse of 
Bismarck. 



III. THE KAISER S GUILT 

It is stated by one who has seen him that the Kaiser 
has lost his air of bustling activity, that his counten- 
ance is grave and careworn, and that his hair has 
turned almost white. We may receive this report, as 
we have learned to receive everything in these days, 

25 



The War Lords 

with reserve; but its probability can hardly be 
doubted. No one who has ever come in contact with 
the Kaiser can have failed to be impressed by his 
highly nervous, almost febrile temperament. He is 
one of those men whose voltage is always excessive. 
You feel that a day must come when the wire will 
fuse. And it must be remembered that he has lived 
on the crest of a pride that has never before known a 
check from man or circumstance. He has sailed all 
his days on a sea of glory, in an atmosphere of despotic 
power that brought no wholesome reminder that he is 
vulnerable like the rest of us and may be made a jest 
of fortune as easily as a clown. When the pride of such 
a man breaks under him he has no support left. His 
fall is proportioned to the extravagance of his claims. 
If he is not infallible, he is nothing. 

Now, at the end of nine months of war, the Kaiser 
is disillusioned. His house of mirrors is shattered and 
he has passed into a valley of humiliation more bitter 
than that traversed by any man in history — more 
bitter than that which Napoleon passed through as he 
fled from the field of Waterloo, for Napoleon had been 
familiar with realities all his life and knew that the 
jest might at any moment be against him. If we would 
measure the disillusion we must look at the situation 
to-day in the light of the faith with which the Kaiser 
set out. That faith is best realised from a remark 
which he made to a member of the present Govern- 
ment on each of the two occasions on which they met. 
It was something like this: " I cannot understand 
why you ally yourself to a broken reed like France. 
Should war begin, my armies will be in Paris within 
a fortnight." And then he repeated with the sunny 
confidence of one who had all the keys of fate beneath 
his fingers — " Within a fortnight." 

26 



The Kaiser 

That was the dream. Let us look at the reality. 
What is the capital fact that emerges from the events 
of the past nine months? I think it is this: the 
hypnotism of the Prussian helmet is gone. For nearly 
fifty years it has held unchallenged sway over the 
mind of Europe. Those of us who are middle-aged 
began our conscious life under the shadow of that 
formidable symbol of conquest and power. There is 
a story — I think it is one of Maupassant's — which 
tells how a Prussian soldier in 1870 got separated 
from his fellows, went to sleep in a ditch, woke up 
and looked over the wall of a neighbouring farm. As 
the helmet rose above the wall, the brave fellows 
inside fled, leaving the Uhlan to range at large. 
Presently the brave fellows returned with reinforce- 
ments, surrounded the farm and captured the Uhlan. 
And the tale ended with the presentation of the Cross 
of the Legion of Honour to the hero of the victor}'. 

That story illustrates in an extravagant way the 
legend of the Prussian helmet. It was an enchanted, 
mystic helmet, winged with victory. A legend of this 
sort is a supreme military asset, and Germany has 
lived on it for nearly half a century. She lives on it no 
longer. The German soldier is stripped of all the 
glamour with which the triumphs of Bismarck and 
Moltke invested him. He is not only not the best 
soldier in Europe; he is not the second best. The fact 
is not due to intrinsic inferiority, but to a mistaken 
tradition. He is not wanting in courage, but he is 
wanting in individuality. He can advance to be 
shot down in the mass, for he has been taught that 
collective courage, but he cannot stand to be shot 
down alone. 

This inferiority of the human factor is related to 
another cause of disillusion. The faith of the Kaiser 

27 



The War Lords 

was founded on Krupps. It was believed that the 
war when it came would be won by the big gun, and 
full of this conviction the Germans placed a reliance 
on that arm which has not been warranted by experi- 
ence. The point perhaps may be put thus: In the 
German Army the gun is first and the men are only 
subsidiary to the gun; among the Allies the man is 
first and the gun is only the means of preparing the 
way for the decisive action of the men. After nine 
months there is no doubt in any mind as to which 
is the sound theory. Battles are won to-day, as they 
have always been won, by men, and it is because 
Germany believed that they were won by material 
and that the onfy use for men was as material that 
she has failed. Whatever guns could do she has done, 
and if she could have repeated the tactics of 1870, 
her early superiority in big guns would have given her 
a speed} 7 triumph. But she has been disillusioned here 
also. The Kaiser's campaign was based on the lessons 
of 1870. He ought to have remembered that nothing 
was less likely than that France would allow those 
tactics to be repeated — that never again would she 
allow her armies to be driven out of the open where 
the genius of her men is at its highest and where 
great howitzers cannot be the final arbiter. 

If we would understand the measure of the Kaiser's 
failure, we must recall the calculations that coursed 
through his mind on that momentous Saturday as he 
stood in the midst of his council, pen in hand, balanc- 
ing the risks and chances before taking the plunge 
into war. On the face of it, the combination against 
him was overwhelming. His eastern frontier was 
threatened by an enemy numerically stronger than 
himself; on his western frontier was an enem}' 
numerically inferior, perhaps in the proportion of 

28 



The Kaiser 

seven to ten, an enemy which Germany had beaten 
with ease in the past, but which, nevertheless, could 
not be despised, and which would have the support 
of the British Army and the Belgian Army. At sea 
his fleet would be held in check by the most powerful 
navy in the world. 

What had he to put against this combination ? He 
had one ally, Austria, upon whom he could rely, but 
that ally was already engaged in a war with Serbia. 
Italy was an ally only in name, had been such since 
the Bismarck-Crispi days, and would certainly refuse 
to fight for the aggrandisement of its historic enemy. 
For the rest, Turkey, whom he had cultivated so 
industriously, might come in if things went well with 
him — perhaps even Sweden and Holland might join 
him, but only under compulsion, and when he had 
shown that he could do without them. Here he was 
getting into the region of speculation. Still more 
speculative were his calculations as to internal trouble 
in England over the Ulster question and in Russian 
Poland. 

We can conceive him summing up. The combina- 
tion against him was composed of solid facts — Russia, 
France, Great Britain, Belgium, Serbia. His own 
combination, apart from Austria, was a thing of 
shadows and hopes. And he knew Austria's genius 
for defeat too well to put much confidence in her 
support. He came back, therefore, to the one indis- 
putable asset at his command — the gigantic war 
machine that he had perfected for his purpose through 
twenty-five years of peace. 

Was that machine, unaided, capable of giving him 
victory over Europe ? And here we can see his mind 
rapidly estimating the value of the enemy. The 
Belgians ? What rabble were they to impede his path ? 

29 



The War Lords 

He would go through them as lightly as through a 
flight of snowflakes. He did not understand that 
liberty is a more powerful engine than any ever 
manufactured at Essen. It was the delay at Liege 
and the wholly unexpected resistance offered by the 
Belgian Army throughout August and September 
that sowed the seed of all that followed. And so with 
the English — those fools of fortune who obstructed 
his path to world dominion. What had he to fear 
from this race of sentimentalists which could not 
stamp out rebellion in Ulster, or whip its insurgent 
women into obedience, and which was so hag-ridden 
by the fetish of liberty that it gave self-government 
to the people it had conquered ? It was a bubble that 
would vanish at a touch of his sword. The British 
Navy ? Yes, that was a reality. But perhaps Admiral 
Tirpitz might make a lucky stroke, and, at the worst, 
he would, adapting Bismarck's phrase, deal with the 
British Navy at Paris. Serbia? Well, even Austria's 
facility for defeat had its limits. There remained France 
and Russia. These were the only realities that his 
calculations left him to face. Of these one was swift, 
but inferior; the other slow, but formidable. He was 
both swift and formidable. We see his sum getting 
near the conclusion. He will launch the whole power 
of his terrible machine against France, scatter her 
armies, overwhelm her in a fortnight and dictate 
terms of peace at Paris. Then, master of Western 
Europe, he will turn to the East with his incomparable 
machine and destroy the hosts of Russia at his leisure. 
That was the conclusion of his calculations. On 
paper it looks even convincing. In that respect it is 
typical of so much that is wrong with the Prussian 
mind. That mind is bookish and theoretic. It is at 
once astonishingly learned and incomparably ignorant. 
3° 



The Kaiser 

It knows all the material facts and ignores all the 
human and moral facts. The incidents of these days 
are strewn with examples. I take two. Germany is 
eagerly appealing for the support of the small neutral 
states and at the same time its chancellor talks of the 
treaty he has signed guaranteeing the neutrality of 
one of these states as " a scrap of paper " to be torn 
up at will. It is appealing for the sympathy of the 
United States and at the same time razes Lonvain 
to the ground, drops bombs upon sleeping cities and 
sows the sea with floating mines — does everything 
in fact which is most calculated to outrage the moral 
sentiment of the most moral and sentimental people 
in the western world. 

And so in the case of the calculations on which the 
Kaiser based his decision. They have come to grief 
not because they were intrinsically wrong, but because 
they left out the realities. His faith in his machine 
was sound. He believed that he could " hack his way 
through " to Paris in a fortnight. And nothing is 
more clear than this, that if he had had to deal with 
France alone and with obvious material facts alone, 
his calculation would have proved true. The world 
has never seen anything comparable with that tre- 
mendous drive southward from the Sambre to the 
Marne. It was not like the movement of an army, 
but like the movement of some mechanical force 
instinct with devilish purpose. 

But like all mechanism it had to work according to 
absolute conditions. It admitted of no unknown or 
spiritual factors. It was a machine, and it had the 
reasoning of machinery. Now war never was and 
never can be a matter of Force alone. However 
perfect the machine, it must be directed with a large 
understanding of the intangible factors involved — 

3i 



The War Lords 

national feeling, personal values, the psychology of 
men and peoples, the play of accident. History is 
full of the triumph of these things over material 
calculation, and no soil is more rich in such lessons 
than that of the Netherlands. 

Take, as an instance of what is meant, that epi- 
sode after the battle of Antietam in the American 
Civil War. One after another his generals implored 
Lee to retreat across the Potomac. The losses had 
been appalling. Hood was quite unmanned. "My 
God!" cried Lee to him, "where is the splendid 
division you had this morning?" "They are 
lying on the field where you sent them," answered 
Hood. Even Jackson urged withdrawal. But Lee 
was immovable. " Gentlemen," he said, rising in 
his stirrups, " we will not cross the Potomac to- 
night. ... If McClellan wants to fight in the 
morning I will give him battle. Go." Now, according 
to all material calculations, Lee was wrong. But one 
of the qualities that give him a place among the great- 
est commanders of history was his grasp of the mind 
and temperament of his opponents. He had one 
method for this man, another for that. He knew that 
the over-caution of McClellan would prevent him 
following up his blow, and he was right. McClellan 
did not attack him next morning, and Lee was left 
with the prestige of a moral victory. 

It was elements like these that the Kaiser left out. 
He forged a bolt that was to go through every obstruc- 
tion to his goal in a given time. It was to be irre- 
sistible, overwhelming, final. The completeness of 
the preparations will remain a monument of German 
efficiency and organisation. And their failure will 
remain a monument of the truth that Force is not 
the absolute master of the destiny of men even on the 

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The Kaiser 



The Kaiser 

field of battle, and that the soul of man counts for 
more than " reeking tube and iron shard." 

But if the military failure has been emphatic, not 
less conspicuous has been the political failure. Ger- 
many began the war fortified with the most amazing 
delusions about the world. They were the delusions 
of a bookish and unimaginative people who labori- 
ously study the facts, but miss the meaning. Take 
the delusion in regard to the British Empire. Time 
will show — the evidence is accumulating in a remark- 
able way — how much their calculations were based 
on the Ulster affair. It was hoped that England would 
not fight because she would be engaged in a revolu- 
tionary struggle at home. It was believed that if 
she did fight her empire would collapse like a house of 
cards. She was a decadent nation, because militarism 
was not her faith, because she trifled with the Carson 
campaign, because she allowed the suffragettes to 
play wild tricks and did not suppress them with a 
ruthless hand, because she gave self-government to 
South Africa, and so on. All this was the mark of 
weakness — the mark of a dying people feebly grasping 
the sceptre of dominion. It was a fatal miscalcula- 
tion. What the Prussian mind took for weakness 
was Britain's impregnable strength. The Prussian 
mind could not grasp the idea of English liberty any 
more than Lord Milner can grasp it. It is that prin- 
ciple of liberty which has made the whole Empire rise 
with such passion to this great argument. The Kaiser 
has not destroyed the Empire: he has established it. 
He has made it realise as it never realised before its 
deep and abiding unity, its lofty spiritual meaning, 
its great gospel of freedom. 

Or take the delusions about Belgium. The Kaiser 
knows to-day that the invasion of Belgium was not 

33 b 



The War Lords 

only a crime, but a blunder. As a military expedient 
it was wrong; as a political expedient it was fatal, 
for it left Germany without a friend in the world, 
except the Turk. And the policy of " f rightfulness " 
was equally ruinous. It was intended to keep Belgium 
subservient by terror, but it overshot the mark. It 
made her soldiers heroes and her people martyrs. 
It shocked the conscience of the world and left 
Germany a criminal at the bar of humanity. Her 
overthrow was no longer merely a political necessity : 
it was a sacred duty. Against the flaming indictment 
of that enormous infamy all her petty arts to win the 
favour of the neutral states have been vain. They are 
arts that, again, reveal her strange limitations, her 
laborious futility, her failure to understand the springs 
of human action. She engineers a wonderful campaign 
of private letters, she buys up newspapers in every 7 
land, she organises press agencies. These devices 
seem, at first, very clever, very Machiavellian, very 
dangerous. In the end they are nothing. In 
the presence of the awful facts mere ingenuities 
perish. 

But though it is the folly of German policy which 
is most interesting to the psychologist, it is its 
wickedness which is the practical concern of society. 
The world is in the presence of an organised criminal- 
ity without precedent in history. Not since Genghis 
Khan devastated Asia from Pekin to the Dnieper has 
the human family suffered such desolation. But 
Genghis Khan was a barbarian who recognised no 
law, human or divine. The Kaiser's war is a betrayal 
of every human law that he has ratified, and an 
outrage on every moral sanction bjr which civilised 
society lives. Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour have 
declared that this war is a war for the defence of the 

34 



The Kaiser 

public law of the world. It is a war to assert the 
authority of a collective justice over the affairs of 
nations. The German position is the denial of that 
authority. Treitschke declared that there was no 
power above the state, that the state was might, 
that it could be brought to no court and subjected 
to no punishment apart from the punishment of a 
superior might. 

It is true that in practice the Kaiser has even gone 
beyond Treitschke's teaching. For example, while 
he taught that treaties could not stand in the way of 
the purposes of the state, he laid it down as the duty 
of a state to denounce a treaty before breaking it. 
Germany did not denounce the Belgian treaty. She 
has not denounced it to this day. It stands in scarlet 
evidence against her. But it is Treitschke's gospel 
of the unchallenged supremacy of the state upon 
which Germany is acting, and it is that gospel the 
world has to break. What in practice has it meant ? It 
has meant that in the sight of Germany there is no 
moral law on the earth to-day. War in any case is a 
cruel and merciless thing. It is its business to be 
merciless. It is organised murder; but because it is 
organised it is governed by rules. It is the equivalent 
in national affairs to the duel in private affairs, and 
there is nothing more rigorous than the respect with 
which the laws of the duel are observed — no dis- 
honour so deep as that implied by disobedience to 
those laws. The meaning of this is clear. Without that 
stringent code the duel would be the sport of the 
assassin. The laws are necessary to protect all who 
follow it, against what the general conscience knows 
to be wrong. 

In the same way the rules of war are made by the 
world as a whole for the common protection in case 

35 



The War Lords 

of need. It is as though in normal times we know 
that we have a wild beast amongst us, caged and 
chained. One day it will be let loose. We do not know 
who will be the victims of its fury, ourselves or our 
rivals. But we agree, in the general interests of 
humanity, to put certain limits upon its powers. 
To-day the wild beast is loose, and Germany has 
released it from every restraint to which she had 
given her sacred pledge. The crimes of Lou vain, 
Dinant, Aerschot, Senlis, and Scarborough, the 
collective punishments, the poisoned wells, the 
deadly gases, the submarine murders, all culminating 
in the crowning infamy of the Lusitania, are declara- 
tions to the world that Germany knows no law of 
God or man in the pursuit of her object. " We did 
wrong," said Herr Bethmann-Hollweg, in speaking 
of the invasion ol Belgium. He did not say it to 
apologise to the world. He said it to justify Germany 
to the world. 

And that has been the attitude throughout. 
Germany has committed these official crimes knowing 
that she was breaking her solemn covenant with 
civilisation. She knew that her bond forbade her to 
bombard undefended towns — that the same bond 
forbade her to exact collective punishment for 
individual offences, to plunder the towns and rob 
the citizens, to drown innocent women and children. 
Yet she has butchered and burned her way through 
Belgium and France, she has taken hundreds of lives 
for single and unproved offences, she has demolished 
towns for revenge and stolen the wealth of the cities 
she has occupied. These things have been done not in 
anger, but on policy. They have been done as it were 
in cold blood, according to a hideous theory of terror- 
ism. They are the crimes of the German Government 

36 



The Kaiser 

and it is these crimes with which the civil conscience 
of the world has to deal. 

How are they to be dealt with ? We know how the 
military power of Germany is to be dealt with. The 
sword must be broken by the sword, and Germany 
must make good to the last penny the material evil 
she has wrought. But the field of battle is not the 
only place where judgment must be delivered. If we 
are to emerge from this frightful harvest with any 
gain to set against our loss, it must be gain in the 
region of the moral governance of nations. Humanity 
must strike a blow against that infamous doctrine 
that there is no power above the state. That blow 
cannot be struck by the sword. If respect for treaties, 
for international law, for the plighted word of states 
is to be rehabilitated it must be rehabilitated by the 
deliberate verdict of society. 

In other words, these crimes against the law of 
nations must be avenged, not by similar crimes on our 
part, but in the same way as they would be avenged 
in civil society. If a man murders another he is tried 
for his crime, and if he is proved guilty he is hanged. 
If he breaks the law which society has made for its 
protection he is answerable to the law. That is the 
principle that should be applied here. Let it be made 
clear that at the end of the war, and as a part of the 
conditions of peace, those who have been responsible 
for crimes against humanity, against the civil popula- 
tion and against the laws of nations shall be tried as 
common criminals by courts of justice according to 
the laws of the land they have outraged. 

This principle should be applicable to all sides and 
it should be applicable not to underlings but to 
principals, to men like Bulow who issued that in- 
famous incitement to crime at Dinant, above all to 

37 



The War Lords 

the Kaiser himself. It is not for us to say what 
German}'- shall do with the dynasty that has brought 
it to this disaster. That we must leave to the people 
themselves who, unless they are hopelessly unt each- 
able, will have been enlightened by the war. But it 
is for us to say what shall be done with the men who 
have outraged the public law, broken their bonds 
with society, and murdered inoffensive citizens. The 
greater the position of the criminal the greater the 
need for such an example as will strike the imagina- 
tion of the world and show that humanity has ceased 
to be the sport of despots. The Laird of Auchinleck 
told Johnson that Cromwell " gar'd kings ken that 
they had a lith in their necks." It was a useful lesson. 
It has been rich in the fruits of freedom. The world 
will be all the better if, after the war, there is another 
reminder that the divine right is an antiquated folly 
that kings can only be tolerated as expressions of the 
popular will, and that if they offend against the laws 
of humanity they must pay the penalty like an}' other 
criminal. 

This is a matter which is as vital to the neutral 
countries as to the belligerents. In a sense, it is more 
vital to them; for if there is no moral law in the 
world, if the law of might is to take us back unchal- 
lenged to barbarism, it is the small countries which 
will be the chief sufferers. For this reason I am glad 
to see that the movement for action on the lines I 
have indicated is coming from neutral quarters. 
Senor Perez Triana, who represented Colombia at 
the last Hague Convention, has already called for 
the punishment of the criminal acts of this war 
according to the common criminal code. That is a 
direction in which the opinion of neutral countries, 
and especially of the United States of America, should 
38 



The Kaiser 

be mobilised. It is in this direction that the world 
can most effectively repudiate the Prussian doctrine 
that the state is above the law and re-establish in 
human society the authority of moral and legal bonds. 
In closing his remarkable estimate of the Kaiser, 
written in 1891, the Portuguese poet, Eca de Queiroz, 
said: " He boldly takes upon himself responsibilities 
which in all nations are divided among various bodies 
of the state — he alone judges, he alone executes, 
because to him alone it is (not to his ministers, to his 
council, or to his parliament) that God, the God of 
the Hohenzollerns, imparts his transcendental inspira- 
tion. He must therefore be infallible and invincible. 
At the first disaster — whether it be inflicted by his 
burghers or by his people in the streets of Berlin, or 
by allied armies on the plains of Europe — Germany 
will at once conclude that his much- vaunted alliance 
with God was the trick of a wily despot. Then will 
there not be stones enough from Lorraine to Pome- 
rania to stone this counterfeit Moses. William II. is 
in very truth casting against fate those terrible ' iron 
dice ' to which the now-forgotten Bismarck once 
alluded. If he win he may have within and without 
the frontiers altars such as were raised to Augustus; 
should he lose, exile, the traditional exile, in England 
awaits him — a degraded exile, the exile with which 
he so sternly threatens those who deny his infallibility. 
... In the course of years (may God make them 
slow and lengthy!) this youth, ardent, pleasing, 
fertile in imagination, of sincere, perhaps heroic, 
soul, may be sitting in his Berlin Schloss presiding 
over the destinies of Europe — or he may be in the 
Hotel Metropole in London sadly unpacking from 
his exile's handbag the battered double crown of 
Prussia and Germany." 

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The War Lords 

It was a picturesque forecast, based on a very 
just reading of the young monarch. But it was 
vitiated by one fact. It left the criminal out of the 
calculation. Twenty-four 3^ears later we can correct 
the forecast by the light of crimes against humanity 
that have no parallel in civilised history. Had 
De Queiroz penetrated to this dark region of the 
Kaiser's character he would not have limited his 
destiny to a universal throne or a lodging at the 
Hotel Metropole. He would have included in it the 
dock and the scaffold. 



40 



KING ALBERT 

AND THE TRAGEDY OF BELGIUM 

When the nightmare has passed and men look back 
with astonishment at the days when earth was hell, 
there is one episode that will stand out conspicuous 
even amidst the universal horror. It is the ruin of 
Belgium. There is no parallel in history to the fate 
that has befallen that unhappy country. There is no 
crime in history comparable with that crime. Peace 
will come again, punishment will be exacted, and the 
oblivion of time will heal many wounds, but neither 
peace nor time nor penalty will wipe out the stain of 
Belgium from the soul of Germany. That is indelible — 
that can never be forgotten and never be forgiven. 
It condemns Germany to eternal obloquy, and places 
the Kaiser among the great criminals of the human 
race. 

We are too near the tragedy and have our minds 
filled with too many anxieties to be able to measure 
this vast wrong. We see it only in fragments as an 
incident of the great struggle in which the destiny of 
the whole world is at stake. We watch the sad stream 
of the homeless that disembarks at Folkstone, the 
piteous crowds that stand at Charing Cross, aimless 
and helpless, incapable even of communicating their 
wretchedness, the throngs that gather around the 
General Buildings in Aldwych as a beacon light in the 
darkness that has overwhelmed them. But these are 
only the fortunate. They have escaped from the 
desolation that was once their country. They give no 
measure of the immeasurable woe. 

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To conceive that inconceivable thing we must think 
of Belgium in the terms of our own land, we must see 
England from Hull to Brighton swept by a tidal wave 
of destruction, the towns in ashes, the industry 
paralysed, the fields a waste, the population dead or 
scattered, the government in exile, London in the 
hands of the enemy and cut off from the world. We 
must see that forlorn procession from Antwerp, surely 
the most tragic in history, wandering in the wet 
autumn days over the levels of Holland — the whole 
population of a great city fleeing at foot's pace 
they know not whither from the terror that is in 
possession of their homes. We must see Brussels silent 
under the iron heel of the invader, its people, rich 
and poor alike, kept alive by soup kitchens, its brave 
Mayor in prison, its liberties gone, its people hardly 
daring to breathe lest the " f rightfulness " that has 
laid waste Lou vain, Termonde, Dinant, and a score 
of other happy and thriving towns descend upon it. 
We must see what all this means in the terms of 
individual misery — hunger, bereavement, homeless- 
ness, families stricken with every woe that can afflict 
humanity, a whole nation left naked to the wolves. 

I had never thought a time would come when I 
should look on the soldier's uniform with envy, and 
when my one grievance against the year of my birth 
would be that it forbade me to join the throng out- 
side the recruiting office. But, then, I never thought 
that this fair earth would become a hell, that a time 
would come when to awake in the golden light of 
September mornings would be to awake to a sense of 
universal desolation and death that darkens the sun 
and makes the peaceful routine of other days seem 
almost unbearable. The sunshine that floods the quiet 
English countryside as I write floods too poor stricken 
42 



King Albert 



Belgium and the fair land of France, floods the ravaged 
towns and the burning villages and the trampled 
cornfields where the dead lie more thick than the 
sheaves of corn. 

But it is not the dead who make it so hard to sit 
idle. The soldier has his compensations. There is joy 
in battle and peace in death; but think of the old 
and the young, the women and the helpless fleeing 
before this unimaginable horror, cowering in cellars, 
starving in woods, their homes in ashes, their hus- 
bands and fathers and brothers gone they know not 
where, and every moment an age of nameless fear. 
I see in the scene described by Mr. Percy Philip all 
this vast tragedy summed up in one pitiful picture — 
the three fearful peasants digging the hurried grave 
of the woman whom they had found with a bullet 
wound in her head. They did not know her name or 
whence she had fled or what was her tragic story. 
All that they knew was that they had found her, like 
so many more, dead in the red wake of the tempest. 
See in her the image of Belgium, the image of France, 
and we have some measure of this universal woe. 

Or take those scenes described in The Times of the 
same day by Mr. A. J. Dawe. He and his friend are 
captured by a German troop which is on its way to 
destroy the village of Steen-Ocker : 

" We turned off into the main street of the village, 
and were made to hold up our hands and taken to the 
far end of the street. Here we were covered by a 
couple of soldiers armed with revolvers. Close to us 
in the middle of the road was stationed a Maxim gun 
ready to mow down the inhabitants if they resisted the 
burning of the village. For three terrible hours we had 
to stand there watching the destruction that began at 
the other end of the street. The men who were guard- 

43 



The War Lords 

ing us told us that from certain houses shots had been 
fired by the civilians during the morning upon a pass- 
ing German troop and that several Uhlans had been 
killed. 

" They began upon the houses from which the shots 
were supposed to have been fired. These houses were 
soon splitting with fire and shooting up great flames. 
Here and there the fire soon spread along the whole 
street. The women and children were herded together 
and set aside. We heard the quick sounds of rifle shots 
as the escaping civilians were picked off." 

He is released and reaches the city which was once 
Louvain — that name that will be branded on the brow 
of Germany for ever : 

" Burning houses were every moment falling into 
the roads ; shooting was still going on. The dead and 
dying, burnt and burning, lay on all sides. Over some 
the Germans had placed sacks. I saw about half a 
dozen women and children. In one street I saw two 
little children walking hand in hand over the bodies of 
the dead men. I have no words to describe these 
things." 

No, there are no words for these things. They strike 
deeper than words, deeper even than tears — strike to 
that ultimate indignation that has no relief except the 
relief of action. If the Kaiser and his army should come 
to disaster, and have to flee, beaten, through the land 
they have ravaged, they will pay a dreadful reckoning. 

Belgium is blotted out. The curtain has fallen upon 
its tragedy, and behind that curtain the people crouch 
in terror while the barbarians tunnel the land with 
mines and turn it into a fortress. 

And if the ruin of Belgium stands out in pathetic 
relief from the general tragedy, the figure of King 
Albert will be equally distinguished among those 

44 



King Albert 



personalities which have been thrown into prominence 
by the catastrophe. The remarkable thing in this 
colossal struggle is the absence of the element of 
personality. It is as though the forces at work are too 
vast to permit of the emergence of the individual, as 
though nothing but some collective, impersonal intelli- 
gence is capable of manipulating hosts which are 
beyond the comprehension of the human mind. No 
doubt also this absence of the conspicuous figure is due 
partly to the fog that invests the war and partly to 
the fact that the weight of the issues involved is so 
oppressive that we are in no mood to discuss men. But 
whatever the cause the truth is, that apart from the 
Kaiser there is no one who dominates the stage in a 
personal sense. General Joffre is still almost the 
shadow of a name, a man wrapped in impenetrable 
silence, but a man nevertheless whose deeds are begin- 
ning to pronounce a golden verdict upon him. Sir 
John French is justifying the confidence universally 
felt in his genius, but he too seems almost lost in so 
vast a theatre. For the rest the Grand Duke Nicholas, 
von Hindenberg, and von Kluck have become names 
— have conveyed to the public that subtle feeling of 
distinction which is the mark of personality. 

There is, however, only one figure who has touched 
the imagination of the world by the qualities of 
humanity and heroism. The King of the Belgians has 
won the hearts of men as few kings or subjects ever win 
them, and whatever the result of the war he will be the 
symbol of its human and chivalric aspects, just as the 
Kaiser will be the symbol of its barbarities and ambi- 
tions. If Europe effects its deliverance from the peril 
that overshadows us it will owe the fact largely to 
the unparalleled sacrifice of Belgium and the heroic 
inspiration of Belgium's king. None of those who have 

45 



The War Lords 

any reserves about kingship need have hesitation in 
making this confession, for King Albert is a king after 
onr own heart — the civic head of a free people. 

Not long ago the name of the King of the Belgians 
was a name of evil import. Leopold II., in his vices, 
ambitions, and magnificence, played the role of the 
grand monarque on a tiny stage. He belonged to the 
tradition of Francois I., Henry VIII., and Louis XIV., 
and had he been cast for a bigger part in sovereignty, 
his masterful, aggressive, and conscienceless spirit 
would have plunged Europe in trouble. His passion 
for splendour was largely at the root of the infamy 
of his rule in the Congo. Men were tortured in the 
rubber forests of the Congo that he might ape magni- 
ficence and build great palaces of empire at home. 
And his contempt for the poor was as flagrant as his 
domestic tyranny and his private scandals. At his 
death M. Vandervelde pronounced on him one of the 
most terrible verdicts ever passed upon a King. " We 
have tried," he said, " to find in this long reign of 
forty-four years one act of goodness, of mercy, of 
charity. Alas, we can find nothing." 

There was never a more striking change in person- 
ality than that achieved when his nephew, Albert, the 
son of the Count of Flanders, came to the throne. 
Like his uncle, King Albert is a man of great stature 
and masterful will; but there the likeness ends. So 
far from playing the grand monarch he is the best 
type of the citizen king that Europe has yet produced. 
M. Waxweiler, the economist of the Solva}^ Institute 
at Brussels, who was King Albert's tutor and who is 
still privileged with his close friendship, gave me long 
ago a pleasant picture of the plain and homely life and 
the eager social interests of this remarkable man. 
Pomp and circumstance are entirely alien to his 
46 



King Albert 



democratic spirit, and it is a popular saying that when 
he ascended the throne he did so " with his wife and 
children." Mr. MacDonnell, in his Life of the king, 
relates in this connection a pleasant incident of the 
accession. The king's daughter, too young to figure 
in the procession, was placed at a window with a supply 
of bread-and-butter. As her father and mother passed 
by she cheered with the crowds outside, waving, 
instead of hat or handkerchief, her slice of bread-and- 
butter. The story may be a pretty journalistic in- 
vention, but it is true to the homely spirit of the citizen 
king. He has reduced the flummery of Courts to their 
lowest expression, and moves among his people with 
an easy, unpretentious friendliness, qualified by a 
modesty that amounts almost to bashfulness. When 
he and his queen come to England, for which he has 
a deep affection, they come as plain citizens, put up 
at an hotel, visit the theatre, go shopping, and vanish 
without the world being any the wiser. 

It is said that a wise man is careful in the choice of 
his parents. Certainly King Albert was fortunate in 
his parentage. His father was as remarkable for his 
capacity as his brother Leopold, but his abilities ran 
in much nobler channels, moral, aesthetic, intellectual. 
He was a student of sociology when that subject was 
still little understood, and his interest in this direction, 
as also in regard to politics and art, had a profound 
influence on his son — all the more profound because 
he had the wisdom to teach by example rather than 
precept, in the French rather than the Prussian spirit. 
Both he and his wife — a Hohenzollern, but of a 
collateral branch of the family that had suffered from 
the aggression of the Prussian house — had a genuine 
passion for the public good and a homely simplicity in 
their domestic ways. In a very real and rare sense 

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The War Lords 

they cultivated the art of plain living and high 
thinking. 

From such a school, King Albert emerged with a 
human and modern outlook perhaps unprecedented 
in the records of royalty. His uncle's passion was the 
greatness of his sovereignty; King Albert's passion 
is the happiness of his people and the good name of 
his country. To advance these his whole life has been 
devoted with extraordinary singleness of aim. His 
chivalrous spirit brought him into sharp conflict with 
his arrogant uncle, and the crime of the Congo made 
the breach final. When the report of the Congo Com- 
mission was issued he was so deeply impressed that, 
disregarding the hostility of the formidable Leopold, 
he set out for the Congo to see the truth for himself. 
I have been told that Leopold never spoke to him 
again. He returned from his investigation in August 
1909, and four months later he became king. His 
accession to the throne was coincident with the wiping 
out of the blot of the Congo from the record of 
his country. This directness of personal action has 
been the dominant note of his career. In order to 
reign wisely he must know the facts for himself. He 
knew that the greatness of a country is expressed not 
in palaces but in the lives of its people, and as heir to 
the throne he set himself to learn what those lives were 
like. He worked in the mines, he drove engines on 
the railways, he mixed with the working classes in all 
their activities. Nowhere was he better known than 
among the fishermen of the coast, the revival of whose 
industry was one of his pet schemes. And the constant 
theme of his speeches in the Senate and elsewhere 
was the well-being of the working population of 
the country. His speech on coming to the throne 
announced a new national ideal — the ideal of the 




H. H. Asquith 



I 



King Albert 



democratic state. Even the language of his speech ex- 
pressed that ideal, for he spoke in the Flemish of the 
poor as well as in the French of the official andeducated 
community. He declared that " the intellectual and 
moral forces of a nation are alone the foundations of its 
prosperity," and laid emphasis on the amelioration 
of the conditions of labour, on education, and on the 
care of the poor as the true concerns of statesmanship. 

But if the condition of the poor was to be raised, 
something else was necessary besides sympathy and 
knowledge. That something was the prosperity of 
industry and commerce. Now there was one defect 
in the equipment of his country which, as a sound 
economist, chiefly disturbed him. Belgium had a 
great overseas trade and the second port in Europe; 
but its merchandise was carried in foreign bottoms, 
chiefly English and German. He saw that this was not 
merely a source of commercial weakness but also a 
political menace. That menace came from Germany. 
Subtly, stealthily, that country was acquiring a 
predominant influence in the life of Antwerp. 
Germans were capturing the Chamber of Commerce, 
the marine insurance business, the control of the 
banks, the possession of the navigation companies, of 
the freighting trade, of ship-broking, of everything. 
Antwerp was becoming a city in which the people 
were Belgians but the masters were Germans. It 
was an open boast of the Germans that they possessed 
Antwerp and would soon possess Brussels also. 

To change all this, Albert, while still heir apparent, 
set himself to emulate the example of Peter the Great, 
though with a nobler purpose. The establishment of 
a mercantile marine for his country became the 
dominant object of his life, and to accomplish it he 
assumed the disguise of a newspaper reporter and 

49 



The War Lords 

visited the principal ports and shipyards of Europe 
to carry out his investigations. It was thus that he 
went to Belfast in 1908. And since his accession he has 
pursued his purpose with less privacy, for he can no 
longer pass himself off as a reporter, but not less 
enthusiasm, as his visit to the United States showed. 
Among the many miscalculations of the Kaiser 
there was none more fatal than his contempt for this 
simple unassuming citizen king and his little people. 
He thought that, willing or unwilling, he could take 
them in his stride. He would have preferred to have 
Albert for his friend of course, and he spared no pains 
to win him with patronage and flattery. He visited 
the Exhibition at Brussels in 1910, and was welcomed 
in the Hotel de Ville by Burgomaster Max, the brave 
man who four years later was to defy his hosts and to 
disappear in his prisons. On that occasion the Kaiser 
made, according to his custom, a speech in extravagant 
praise of the progress of Belgium — that Naboth's vine- 
yard on which he had set his heart. And we know 
from the French Yellow Book how when, in August 
1913, his plans were ripening and he had finally yielded 
to the militarists, he, accompanied by Count von 
Moltke, made his final bid for the support of King 
Albert. It was then that the young king knew that 
the storm that had been threatening his country was 
inevitable and imminent, and he made the choice of 
a brave man and a great king. Indeed, he had made 
it already. He knew the Hohenzollerns of Prussia. 
He knew the ruthless way in which they had snatched 
Schleswig-Holstein from a junior branch of the family. 
He knew that he could never buy off that brigand 
power by surrender — that, whatever his service, the 
victory of Germany would end the independence of 
his country. He had no passion for military glory. 

50 



King Albert 



All his interests were pacific and social, all his hopes 
centred in the commercial and industrial development 
of his country. He had studied the military art of 
course. As a youth of seventeen he had shared the 
training and discipline of the farmers and trades- 
men who were preparing for the rank of officers 
in the army. He had then given little promise of 
greatness, for he had none of the precocious brilliancy 
that is often so illusive and fleeting. Talent reveals 
itself early, but character is a later growth, and it 
was the quality of character by which this shy, 
lanky youth with his studious and reflective habit 
was one day to win the admiration of the world. 
But though he had no warlike enthusiasm, he studied 
the art of the soldier with the same thoroughness that 
he gave to all his tasks, and when he became king and 
saw the cloud gathering in the east, saw that one day 
his country might have to make the choice between 
fighting Prussia or passing into ignoble servitude to 
it, he hastened the scheme of military re-organisation, 
which was still only half-completed when the storm 
burst. 

His rejection of the Kaiser's overtures was a wound 
to the vanity of that monarch, but it was not 
regarded as a serious obstacle in his path. To his 
essentially theatrical mind the quality and importance 
of this modest king of a little country were not dis- 
cernible. It was the first grave blunder in the war. 
Events have revealed that behind this life of unpre- 
tentious industry, domestic affection, and social enthu- 
siasm there is a man cast in heroic mould — a man 
prepared to see his country laid waste and to die in 
the last entrenchment with his people rather than sur- 
render the priceless jewel of the freedom of his country. 
It is said that he fired the last shot in the defence of 

5i 



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Antwerp. It may be true. I do not think it is, for the 
act does not accord with the wholly untheatrical spirit 
of the man. He would not fire the last shot for show, 
but he would assuredly die the first or the last death 
for honour. And whatever the course of the war, 
whatever the fate of Europe, it is in him that the 
future will see the most human, the most knightly 
figure of this Titanic struggle. 

It is not wise perhaps at this stage to probe too 
closely the secrets of those last tragic days at Ant- 
werp ; but when those secrets are revealed the spirit 
of this man will shine out with a radiance that will 
glow in the pages of history for ever. Like Grenville 
of old he cried, " Fight on, fight on," when the day 
seemed hopeless and the end imminent, and when the 
hearts of those about him were in despair. He and his 
people have won an immortality that will be a 
precious inheritance and an enduring inspiration for 
humanity. They have given us a new faith in our 
kind. They have shown us that in the most peaceful 
and bourgeois people the passion of patriotism can 
still flame into great deeds, that the soul of man is 
mightier than all the engines of Krupps, that in the 
final ordeal there is found in us the deathless spark 
that defies death. As we think of this scattered and 
tortured people, crushed at home under the harrow 
of the invader, wandering in hosts over the plains of 
Holland, starving — tens of thousands of them — on 
the sea shore at Flushing, we do not know whether 
the deepest feeling that surges in us is pity for their 
sorrow or pride in their glory. But this we know, 
that the sorrow will pass, but that the glory is 
fadeless. 

And to us in England, how deep is the debt we 
owe them, King and people alike. They have drunk 

52 



King Albert 



the cup of bitterness for us. How easy it would have 
been for them to have made craven terms with the 
bully, to have bartered their honour and their liberty 
for their lives and their possessions. And how vast a 
difference that would have made to our task, to the 
course of the war, to the fate of the world, to the 
liberties of all free peoples. It is that thought that 
makes the loss of Antwerp so keen a blow, and leads us 
to rejoice in that last effort of Mr. Churchill to save 
it. He is assailed for that effort by his critics, and it 
is probably true that in this, as in other cases, he 
went outside the proper functions of his office. But, 
putting that consideration aside, Mr. Churchill's 
action was splendidly justified. He saw Antwerp 
slipping away and heart and brain leapt to a call 
as urgent and imperative as any ever made to a 
nation. The Seventh Division of the British Army, 
which had been commissioned to save Antwerp, was 
delayed. Why it was delayed so long is not yet clear, 
and it may be doubted whether, in any case, it was 
adequate for the purpose. At last it was despatched 
from Southampton, but Antwerp was now nearing 
the last gasp. If it could hold out a few days longer 
it might still be saved ; but how was it to hold out ? 
The army was worn out by ten weeks of unexampled 
struggle against overwhelming odds. The early cry of 
" Where are the English? " had given place to despair 
and indignation. The defences of the city, which had 
been supposed to be invulnerable, were breaking down. 
" Why should we see Antwerp reduced to ruins? " 
was the question on many lips. " Every place we have 
defended is destroyed. Brussels, which we yielded, is 
saved. Why should we sacrifice Antwerp for those 
who give us no help? " I believe I am right in saying 
that in that dark hour King Albert stood almost 

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alone. " Hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when 
it had gone out of all others." He resisted the appeal 
of his ministers to surrender. But still the English 
did not come. It was at that critical moment that 
Mr. Churchill gathered his little force of Naval 
Reserve men and threw them (and himself) into the 
breach. It was a forlorn hope. The men were raw 
recruits, ill-equipped, untrained, but they were the 
first visible assurance that Belgium had had that she 
was not deserted. The effect on the Belgians, as those 
who were present on the memorable Sunday when the 
first contingent arrived have told me, was electrical. 
And but for a further delay in the transport of the 
Seventh Division, the miracle would perhaps have 
been accomplished and Antwerp saved. But the un- 
lucky Seventh Division had been held up at Dover 
owing to fear of mines, and when at last it was on 
the march Antwerp had fallen. Mr. Churchill's effort 
had failed, but it was as wise as it was chivalrous, 
and when the time comes for the story of the fall of 
Antwerp to be written, it will be found that some one 
blundered, but that it was not the man who tried 
to save it. 

No one doubts to-day that King Albert was right 
in staking everything on the possession of Antwerp. 
It may be that the historian will pronounce a severe 
judgment on the Allies for their neglect of Belgium 
in the early phase of the struggle, and that, not on 
moral, but on military grounds. The moral claim was, 
of course, overwhelming. It was the defence of the 
neutrality of Belgium which was the immediate 
purpose of our intervention. But there is a widespread 
feeling that the military claim was equally great, and 
that had Antwerp and the Belgian coast been strongly 
held the position of the German right would have been 

54 



King Albert 



seriously endangered. It was, I understand, the wish 
of the British War Office to send the British Army to 
Belgium, and the advantage of having the Belgian 
coast as a base is obvious. But General Joffre's 
strategy did not, of course, emerge from the interests 
of either Belgium or England. His sole aim was to 
defeat the enemy, and neither moral nor sentimental 
considerations have ever interfered with his action. 
He wanted to shorten his line, and the British Army 
had to conform to his strategy, with the result that 
the Belgian Army was left unaided and Antwerp fell. 

With the capture of that great seaport Belgium 
ceased to exist. But its surrender affected much 
greater interests even than those of Belgium. It 
was . the most important success which Germany 
had had in the war, and it made a profound im- 
pression not only on the belligerent countries but 
on the general opinion of the world. It was one of 
the facts which turned the scale in Turkey, where 
the peace party in the ministry were engaged in 
resisting the attempts of Enver Pasha to involve the 
country in the war on the side of Germany. The 
military consequences of the fall of Antwerp were as 
serious as the political consequences. The menace 
to the German flank had vanished, and the enemy 
were free to extend their line to the Belgian coast 
and to use Zeebrugge as a submarine base for the 
coming " blockade " of the British ports by sub- 
marine. Antwerp, in fact, became, in Napoleon's 
phrase, a loaded pistol held at the head of England, 
a grave obstacle to the ultimate advance of the Allies 
and an immense asset for Germany to bargain with 
in the final settlement. 

From that moment King Albert was a king without 
a country, but in losing all he had won immortality 

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and the assurance of ultimate victory. Henceforward 
he and his people constituted the first charge on the 
cause of the Allies. We have to save civilisation; but 
above all, first of all, we have to resurrect the 
country that lies bleeding across the Channel, almost 
within sight of our own shores. Belgium has died 
for freedom, for our freedom, for the freedom of the 
world. Let us see that she rises again triumphant 
from her tears and ashes. And if righteousness endures 
beneath the sun, she will rise. 



56 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 

AND THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND 

I. THE COMING OF THE STORM 

No one who was in the House of Commons on August 
3 will ever forget the emotions of that tragic day. 
The storm that had come up from the East had burst 
so suddenly that men were still stunned by its impact. 
Only a fortnight before the sky of Europe had seemed 
cloudless. The murders at Serajevo on June 28 had 
created a momentary sensation and then had been 
forgotten in the tumult of the domestic conflict that 
was approaching a crisis. That conflict was the final 
stage of the struggle which was foreshadowed by 
the election of 1906, and which began in earnest with 
the Budget of 1909. From that episode onwards there 
had been no pause in the hostilities which, with the 
passing of the Parliament Act, had culminated in 
the long-delayed battle over Home Rule. 

At ever}' stage of the conflict the tension increased, 
and in March there occurred the sinister episode of 
the Curragh Camp, which, for the first time for centuries, 
threw the shadow of the sword over Westminster. 
The courage and address of Mr. Asquith had averted 
the immediate peril, but had not decreased the 
gravity of the general situation, and the air was full 
of the growing menace of civil war in Ulster — a 
menace propagated by a section of the press and 
endorsed by some of the opposition leaders. As 
July advanced Parliament and the country alike 
were absorbed more and more by the drama that 

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seemed about to plunge Ireland in rebellion. Every 
eye was fixed on Ulster and hardly a glance was cast 
eastwards. An Englishman who was in Berlin during 
the week beginning on July 18 has told me how 
puzzled he was, in that electrical atmosphere, to 
notice the unconsciousness that the English press 
exhibited of the significance of events on the continent. 
It is true that until the middle of that week no atten- 
tion was paid in the London newspapers to the 
Austro-Serbian situation, and it was not until the 
night of the 23rd that serious alarm was really 
awakened by the news of the ultimatum. The next 
day the Ulster issue had a rival in the public mind, 
and during the following week it receded into the 
background as the new peril grew with hourly signifi- 
cance. Day by day Parliament met under a deepening 
shadow. It knew nothing of the tremendous struggle 
that was going on behind the scenes — the struggle 
subsequently revealed in the thrilling pages of the 
White Paper — but it knew the fate of Europe was in 
the balance, and when, on the Thursday, in answer to 
a question by Mr. Bonar Law as to the situation, 
Mr. Asquith rose and in one brief sentence declared 
it to be " most grave," its mind was prepared for the 
worst. 

And now on Monday, August 3, it had assembled 
to hear the fate of this country in the general calamity. 
It was a beautiful summer afternoon, and amid the 
silence of the Chamber there could be heard the 
muffled sound of the traffic of the city outside. It 
was the last day of the great peace, and even now, 
though war had already broken out on the continent 
and the Stock Exchange was closed, London seemed 
to be occupied with its normal activities. Except for 
the crowds in Palace Yard and the unusual throng 

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in the outer lobbies, there was little to indicate that 
the greatest catastrophe in history had befallen the 
civilised world. But inside the House the sense of 
impending doom was like a visible presence. A strange 
silence pervaded the crowded benches, and the ordi- 
nary preliminaries seemed like the echoes of a dream 
world that had vanished. Sir Edward Grey was mani- 
festly impatient with the delay. He sat in the midst 
of the crowded Front Bench, the Prime Minister by his 
side. His customary repose and detachment had 
gone. He was flushed and restless, and at last leaned 
towards one of his colleagues and whispered some 
urgent instruction. The other moved along the 
Front Bench to the Speaker, and a minute later Sir 
Edward Grey was on his feet, and for an hour the 
breathless House listened to what Mr. Balfour after- 
wards called the most momentous speech that had 
been made in Parliament for a century. When it was 
over the House knew that a declaration of war against 
Germany was only a question of hours. The chapter 
of the past was closed. The nation was embarked on 
strange and perilous seas. 

It is almost with an effort that we recall to-day 
what we were talking about so furiously when this 
thing came upon us. The word " Ulster " seems to be 
only the echo of 

" Old, unhappy, far-off things 
And battles long ago." 

You go into the House of Commons in these days 
and you are puzzled at the strange peace that prevails. 
Gone are all the familiar savageries of question time, 
the fierce debates, the bitter jibes, the scornful 
laughter. Even the habitual indignation of Sir 
Clement Kinloch-Cooke at the wickedness of the 

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Government has subsided, and Lord Winterton has 
vanished with so many more to other fields. Mr. 
Lloyd George relates how generously Mr. Chamberlain 
has come to his help, and Mr. Chamberlain says how 
heartily he is in agreement with everything that Mr. 
George has done. Strangest of all is the scene when 
Mr. Redmond rises and tells of the loyalty of Ireland, 
of the valour of its volunteers and of its readiness to 
relieve the Government of all trouble of defence. 
There is a storm of cheering from every quarter of the 
House, and it seems as if in a moment, at one breath 
of real danger, at the call of a common cause, the 
Irish question has vanished. 

Never in history has there been such a House of 
Commons. All controversy is hushed and the machine 
works with a swiftness and smoothness that leaves the 
oldest parliamentary hand gasping with astonishment 
at the miracle. If any one rises to ask a question the 
whole House seems indignant. You feel that if he 
were to go much further and attempt to obstruct 
he would be taken out and shot by the unanimous 
verdict of the Chamber. Votes of a hundred millions 
pass without challenge. The railways are taken over 
by the State at a stroke of the pen. Laws affecting 
the most intimate and vital affairs of everyday life 
are passed while you wait — literally while you wait. 
We are having lessons in social legislation that will 
never be forgotten, and Sir Frederick Banbury himself 
is silent. 

The spectacle that we have witnessed almost daily 
during the early stages of the war is unexampled in 
the annals of Parliament. A Minister rises, introduces 
a Bill, say, for delay in payment of all our debts, or 
appropriating food-stuffs, or closing public-houses 
earlier or altogether, moves the second reading, sits 

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down. The Speaker rises, reads the title of the Bill, 
adds " Those in favour say ' Aye.' . . . The ' Ayes ' 
have it," and descends from the Chair to the floor. 
The Sergeant of Mace advances from the end of the 
Chamber, bows twice, removes the mace, returns 
to his seat, and the House is in Committee. The 
Chairman of Committee rises, reads the first Clause — 
" Those in favour say ' Aye ' — the ' Ayes ' have it " 
— reads the second Clause — " Those in favour, etc." 
— and so on to the end, and the Bill is through 
Committee as rapidly as it can be read. Back comes 
the Sergeant, and restores the mace. The Speaker 
resumes his place, murmurs " Say ' Aye ' — the ' Ayes ' 
have it," and the Bill is through the House and on 
its way to the House of Lords, whence it returns with 
an expedition quite startling to a Liberal Govern- 
ment. But indeed there is no Liberal Government 
to-day. There is only one party in the state within 
and without the House. 



II. THE FIRST CABINET 

In surveying the situation in England at the close 
of the first nine months of the war, two features 
deserve attention, not only because of their im- 
portance, but also because of their unexpectedness. 
One is the entire absence of emotionalism and 
especially of any tendency to Jingoism on the part 
of the public ; the other is the remarkable confidence 
shown in the Government. Both proceed in some 
measure from the one cause. The menace is so over- 
whelming as to leave no room for the ordinary 
extravagances of popular feeling or party prejudice. 
Apart from the licensed perversity of Mr. Bernard 
Shaw, only one sentiment prevails. The country is 

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satisfied that it is fighting for its existence against 
the most powerful enemy that ever assailed it, and 
it is satisfied also that the Government is free from 
complicity in the crime that is deluging Europe with 
blood. With the practical good sense that comes 
with a supreme emergency, it avoids alike the sort 
of popular frenzy that characterised the progress 
of the Boer War and the censorious attitude usually 
adopted towards a Government in war time. 

But there is another and more positive reason why 
the Government commands the confidence of the 
country. John Bright used to say that war always 
destroyed the Government that waged it, and the 
present war may be no exception to the rule. But 
at the end of nine months of unexampled trial, Mr. 
Asquith's Administration seems as firmly seated as 
at any moment in its history. Pitt himself did not 
possess more authority over the public mind than 
Mr. Asquith and his colleagues exercise to-day. 
There are, of course, departmental criticisms on such 
subjects as the contracting methods of the War Office 
and the administration of the Press Bureau. There 
are also the acerbities of Lord Northcliffe and the 
Morning Post, chiefly directed in the one case against 
Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane, in the other against 
Mr. Churchill. But these criticisms do not touch the 
central faith of the country in its rulers. That is 
absolute, unquestioning, and wholly unprecedented, 
and it is as marked on the Conservative side of 
politics as on the Liberal. 

If there is an element of surprise in the general 
satisfaction, it must be remembered that the memories 
of the South African War are still fresh in the public 
mind. The history of that war was a record of 
almost uninterrupteddisappointments,militaryfailure, 

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financial blundering, false estimates of difficulties, 
false methods of handling them — all culminating in 
the humiliating scandals revealed by the War Stores 
Commission. The experience of that war was un- 
doubtedly a valuable preparation for the struggle 
that was to come fifteen years later. It sent the 
nation to school, chastened its spirit, spread abroad 
a popular distrust of the cant of Imperialism, and led 
to a searching revision of the military system of the 
country. England entered on the European War 
with a vastly better equipment and in a much saner 
spirit than could have been the case without the 
lessons of South Africa. Moreover, it must not be 
forgotten that the smooth working of the military 
and financial machine which so astonished the country 
at the beginning of the war was largely due to the 
alarms of 1911, which prepared the Government for 
the handling of the situation when it came three 
years later. 

But when every consideration of this sort has been 
admitted, the efficiency of the Government remains 
a matter of universal agreement. The boldness of its 
measures, the promptness with which they were put 
into operation, the far-seeing scope of its prepara- 
tions, and the sense of unity and momentum behind 
its action have impressed the nation profoundly and 
given it a feeling of security which events have done 
nothing to weaken. The extent to which England 
has provided, not only the material and financial 
resources of the Allies, but their intellectual energy 
and initiative is well understood, and there is in no 
quarter any disposition to refuse to the Government 
the main credit for the satisfactory course of the 
campaign. 

The capacitv of the Asquith Administration in the 
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parliamentary and legislative sphere had, of course, 
long been recognised, with enthusiasm on the one 
side, grudgingly and of necessity on the other. But 
success in the parliamentary sense did not necessarily 
predicate success in the wholly different tasks of war 
— might indeed foreshadow unfitness for those tasks. 
And yet familiarity with the dominating personalities 
of the Cabinet could hardly warrant any disquiet on 
the subject, for those personalities have throughout 
been conspicuous as men of action and of swift 
adaptibility to new conditions and new problems. 
It is no reflection upon the general level of the 
Cabinet, which is unusually high, to say that its force, 
inspiration, and direction proceed from five only of 
the twenty members. These five consist of the Prime 
Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. 
Churchill, and Lord Kitchener. One might be tempted 
to add a sixth in the person of Mr. Harcourt were it 
not that his achievement always seems incommen- 
surate with the sense of latent power that he conveys. 
He made his first speech in Parliament as a Minister 
of the Crown, and expectation has waited on him 
patiently for some demonstration of his father's 
masterful influence; but it has waited so long in 
vain that it is disposed to leave his doorstep. But, 
though he has made little impression on the country, 
and, indeed, seems indifferent to popular reclame, he 
carries into the Cabinet a personal force and a subtlety 
of mind that are never negligible. He may be paired 
with Lord Haldane — an old foe of his in the days of 
the Boer War — who with equal subtlety of mind and 
much more activity in public also just fails, in spite 
of his enthusiasm for the doctrine of " efficiency, " to 
be a first-rate influence on events. 

From the five members who may be said to con- 
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stitute the driving power of the Government, Lord 
Kitchener may be momentarily detached. He is the 
soldier, sans phrase, who has been introduced into 
the Cabinet for the emergency and on entirely 
technical grounds. The remaining four divide them- 
selves temperamentally into two widely different 
groups. Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey are typical 
products of the Balliol of Jowett's great day — con- 
temptuous of display and rhetoric, avoiding all dema- 
gogic appeals to popular emotion with a sort of 
academic horror of vulgarity; given to understate- 
ment rather than overstatement of their case; dis- 
trustful of the idealist and placing their feelings under 
a ruthless intellectual discipline ; commanding respect 
for their high qualities of character rather than 
affection for the warmth of their human sympathies. 
Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill, on the other 
hand, are as popular as music-hall artists, men who 
love the platform and delight in intimate intercourse 
with the crowd, who draw their inspiration direct 
from the democracy, rejoice in action rather than in 
speculation, respond much more readily to emotional 
impulse than to theory, and approach every issue with 
an empirical courage that is indifferent to tradition. 

It will be obvious from this contrast, that while 
Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey are the steadying 
power of the combination, their two colleagues are 
the sails that give it volition. It is not the least of 
Mr. Asquith's merits that he has been able to attach 
to himself and to retain the loyalty of men of such 
startlingly different habits of mind from his own. 
The fact is largely due to his. remarkable freedom 
from the vices of egoism and personal ambition. No 
one ever came to power with less individual assertive- 
ness or in a more personally disinterested spirit. His 
temperament is naturally easy-going and a little 

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flaccid. He does not care who gets the popular 
applause so long as the work is done; but he would 
rather that it was not himself, for he has as little 
passion for the mob as Coriolanus, or, to take a 
modern example, the late Lord Salisbury. To some 
extent, no doubt, his reticence is due to a certain 
shyness which often assumes a protective shield of 
cold indifference. That, behind the rather frigid 
public exterior, he cultivates the sensibilities is known 
to his friends and has more than once been revealed 
to the public. He is the only man I have seen break 
down in the House of Commons under the stress of 
emotion. It was on the occasion when he announced 
the final failure of his efforts to bring about a settle- 
ment in the memorable coal strike of 191 1. And no 
one who heard his noble tribute to Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman could doubt either his sympathy or the 
candour of his mind. For during the Boer War his 
relations with Sir Henry had been extremely strained, 
and when he took office under him he shared the 
general distrust of the Liberal Imperialists in regard 
to one whose simplicity of manner concealed from 
them the essential greatness of his character, and 
whose loyalty to a very plain faith was easily mistaken 
for a phlegmatic obstinacy. 

It is the accident of events that has made Mr. 
Asquith the pilot during the most stormy period of 
British politics for certainly a century. He is himself, 
by temperament, the least adventurous of statesmen. 
His quality is intellectual rather than imaginative, 
and he is congenitally indisposed to pluck the peach 
before it is ripe. At no time in his career has he 
forced issues on the public. He is content to leave 
the pioneering work to those who like it, and prefers 
to make his appearance when the air has been warmed. 
It would be wholly wrong to assume from this that 

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he is an opportunist, or that he is governed by the 
motions of the weathercock. Nothing, indeed, could 
be further from the truth. It is simply that he is 
neither an adventurer, nor a political gambler, nor 
an idealist ; but a plain politician interested only in 
practicable things and a little indifferent to dreams, 
even though they are on the point of becoming 
realities. But once engaged, his mind works with 
unequalled power. All the resources of the most 
capacious intellect that has been placed at the service 
of Parliament since Gladstone disappeared are 
brought into play with an economy of method, a 
startling clearness of thought, and a passionless 
detachment of spirit that give him an unrivalled 
mastery of the House. " Bring me the sledge- 
hammer," whispered Campbell-Bannerman on one 
occasion to his neighbour on the Government bench, 
and Mr. Asquith was brought. His approach to the 
dialectical battle is like the massive advance of an 
army corps, just as Mr. Lloyd George's approach is 
like the swift onset of a cavalry brigade. He has 
himself expressed his agreement with Pitt that the 
highest virtue of statesmanship is patience, and few 
men have shown a more abundant supply of that 
virtue in trying situations. His philosophy of 
" Solvitur Ambulando " is often dangerously like 
a philosophy of Drift. His tolerance of the Ulster 
conspiracy more than once tested the faith of his 
supporters, and in the midst of the passions aroused 
by the passage of the Parliament Act I saw him for 
nearly an hour vainly endeavouring to speak while 
Lord Hugh Cecil and the young Tories howled at 
him like wolves, and throughout all that unparalleled 
insult he stood with a certain cold scorn, but without 
one word of anger escaping his lips. He would not 
stoop even to characterise such an outrage. 

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But there is one thing that moves him to passion. 
He has the soul of the lawyer — the reverence for the 
bond, for constitutional precedent, for international 
law, for the sacred word of nations. He touches 
greatness most when he is asserting some abstract 
principle of government, as, when replying at the 
Albert Hall to some airy remark of Mr. Balfour that 
a question of taxation was only a pedantry, he said: 
" A pedantry! But it was for pedantries like these 
that Pym fought and Hampden died." And no one 
who heard that tremendous impeachment of Germany 
on the day following the declaration of war can ever 
doubt the fierce passion for fundamental things that 
blazes beneath this drilled and disciplined exterior. 

Mr. Asquith, indeed, is a man whom the emergency 
has always found greater than the occasion. His 
natural tendency to laisser-faire, his habit of never 
facing a thing until it becomes imminent, give the 
impression of want of force, of lack of fire and flame, 
of intellectual indifference to the issue. But in the 
moment of crisis he envelopes a situation with a 
sudden and masculine authority that has had no 
parallel in the House of Commons in this generation. 
It was so in the case of the famous Curragh Camp 
episode. A position had been allowed to develop of 
the gravest menace, not only to the Government, but 
to the authority of Parliament over the army. The 
War Secretary had had to resign, the head of the 
General Staff had refused to continue in office, and 
the Government seemed in imminent peril. Then, 
without, I believe, consulting anyone, Mr. Asquith 
came down to the House and announced that he 
himself would take the War Secretaryship. It was a 
master stroke that changed the situation in a moment, 
and the scene that followed — the thrilling shout of 
triumph on the one side, the visible rout on the 

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other — was as memorable as anything in the annals 
of Parliament. Among the many German miscalcula- 
tions in regard to England there was none more 
disastrous than the misunderstanding of Mr. Asquith. 
He is slow to anger, but, his indignation aroused, 
there is in him a concentrated passion and a sense of 
power that give extraordinary impetus and weight 
to his onset. And in their open repudiation of law 
and honour among nations, the Germans in his eyes 
outraged the very ark of the covenant. 

If Mr. Asquith's intellectual mastery of the House 
is supreme, Sir Edward Grey's influence is not less 
remarkable as a triumph of character. In many 
respects his equipment is undistinguished. He has 
travelled little — it is jocularly said that he paid his 
first visit to Paris when he accompanied the King 
there a short time ago — he is not a linguist, he is 
wholly insular in his tastes, almost unknown in 
society, much more devoted to fishing than to politics, 
speaks little and then in the plainest and most 
unadorned fashion, is indifferent to the currents of 
modern life and turns for his literature to the quietism 
of Wordsworth, Walton, and White's Selbome, is 
rarely seen in the House, and then seems to stray in, 
as it were, like a visitor from another planet. And 
in spite of all this, he exercises an almost hypnotic 
influence on Parliament. The detachment of his 
mind, the Olympian aloofness and serenity of his 
manner, the transparent honesty of his aims, his 
entire freedom from artifice and from appeals to 
" the gallery," all combine to give him a certain 
isolation and authority that are unique. His speech 
has the quality of finality. Mr. Asquith wins by the 
directness and weight of his intellectual resources; 
Mr. Lloyd George by the swiftness and suppleness of 
his evolutions. Sir Edward Grey wins by his mere 

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presence, and the sense of high purpose and firmness 
of mind which that presence conveys. He is more 
advanced in his views and more popular in his sym- 
pathies than his manner and speech convey; but in 
his conduct of Foreign Affairs he has adopted a 
reticence towards Parliament which has been resented, 
notably in the case of the Russian Agreement of 
1907, which was published two days after the parlia- 
mentary session had closed, and also in regard to 
the nature of the military " conversations " with 
France first disclosed to Parliament in the speech of 
August 3 last. 

It was a disaster that in the fateful years which 
led up to the war Germany was represented in 
England by Count Metternich, whose supple and 
disquieting manner, full of Machiavellian suggestion, 
clashed unpleasantly with the direct and simple 
habit of Sir Edward Grey. Neither could understand 
the other. Sir Edward could not get behind that 
elusive exterior, and Metternich could not under- 
stand that such plainness as Sir Edward Grey's was 
anything but a cunning disguise. A change came 
when Baron Marschall von Bieberstein superseded 
Metternich, and when a little later (on the Baron's 
death) Prince Lichnowsky came with his gentle 
manner and obvious frankness of purpose. It seemed 
then, especially with the successful co-operation of 
England and Germany during the Balkan Wars, 
that the danger-point in the relations of the two 
peoples was passed, and Sir Edward Grey was clearly 
moving with strong hope towards an understanding 
with Germany. His efforts for peace during the last 
fatal week of July are on record, and no one who 
saw him in the House during those thrilling days 
can doubt either his surprise at the sudden blow or 
his passionate desire to save Europe from the coming 

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disaster. When someone met him after his speech of 
August 3 and rather ineptly offered his congratula- 
tions he turned away with the remark, " This is the 
saddest day of my life." I am told that at the Cabinet 
Council next morning more than one minister broke 
down under the dreadful strain, and that Sir Edward 
Grey was among them. But, indeed, there were more 
tears shed in England in those tragic days than ever 
before. And they were not tears of weakness, but of 
unspeakable grief. 

If Mr. Asquith is the brain of the Cabinet and Sir 
Edward Grey its character, Mr. Lloyd George is its 
inspiration. No matter what the wave that rolls in, 
he is always on its crest. He is light as a cork, swift 
as a swallow, prompt as a tax-collector. There is the 
magic of genius about this glancing, wayward, 
debonair Welshman who, with nothing but his own 
native wit and dauntless courage — his sling and his 
stone, as it were — has stormed the seats of the mighty 
and changed the whole current of British politics. 
For ten years the fiercest battle in modern political 
annals has raged around his crest. All the forces of 
wealth, influence, society, and privilege have been 
mobilised for his suppression, for with a true instinct 
they have seen in his agile mind, his far-reaching 
aims, and his unrivalled influence over the democracy 
the supreme peril to their interests. And at the end 
of the breathless struggle, when the country is fighting 
for its very existence, his fiercest foes are loudest in 
his praise, and the city bankers are, half in jest, but 
half in earnest, suggesting that his services should be 
rewarded with a dukedom. The secret of this unprece- 
dented career is not obscure. He is the first real 
expression of the supremacy of the democracy. Other 
men have interpreted democracy from without, 
philosophically, objectively; but here is one who 

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comes hot from its very heart, uttering its thoughts 
in its own language, feeling its agonies and aspirations 
with passionate sympathy, making them vivid and 
actual with the glow of his mind and the swift 
imaginative illumination of a poetic temperament. 
All his thought and action come from his direct 
experience of life. No man of distinction ever carried 
less impedimenta, or was more free from the domina- 
tion of the past or the thought of other minds. He 
lives by vision, not thought; by the swiftness of his 
apprehension, not by the slow correlation of fact and 
theory. If he wants to introduce a shipping bill he 
takes a voyage to study the life of the sailor at first 
hand ; if he wants to know about coal-mining he goes 
down a coal-mine; if he wants to know what is 
wrong with casual labour he mixes with the crowd 
at the dock gates in the early morning to hear with 
his own ears and see with his own eyes. It is this 
directness and actuality, this independence of all 
theory and doctrine, that give him his astonishing 
volition. He is not encumbered with precedent, but 
leaps to his own conclusion and flashes to his own 
goal, careless of all the criticisms of the learned. He 
takes his sympathies for his counsellors, and leaves 
political doctrine to the schoolmen. It follows that 
he is least convincing and least convinced when his 
case rests on a statement of theory. For example, 
he has made the most brilliant series of political 
speeches delivered during the past fifteen years, but 
though the fiscal issue has been one of the prominent 
subjects of discussion I cannot recall one really 
weighty contribution that he has made to the Free 
Trade case. 

There is, of course, a peril in this empiricism. It 
is the source at once of the glamour that invests his 
movements and the nervous expectancy with which 

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those movements are watched. But he has two safe- 
guards. The first is his real passion for the common 
people. With all his success and all his wanderings 
into high places, his heart is untravelled. It turns 
unfailingly to the little village between the mountains 
and the sea from which he sprang, and to the old 
shoemaker uncle who watched over his childhood 
and taught himself French that he might pave the 
way of the boy to the law, and who still lives to 
marvel at the man who has made a sounding board 
of the world. That love of the people, sincere and 
abiding, is his saving grace. And, in the next place, 
he is not unconscious of the peril of the quality which 
is at once his strength and his weakness. He has no 
petty vanity, and though he does not go to text-books 
he goes to men. On every subject as it arises he 
gathers round him the best expert minds available, 
thrashes out the problems over the breakfast table, 
in committee, on the golf-links, everywhere, and 
with his easy accessibility to ideas arrives at con- 
clusions which are usually informed and practical. 
It is this practice which makes the giddy and daring 
path that he has followed so secure and so triumphant. 
And it is this practice also which, during this crisis, 
has made him the idol of his former enemies. The 
nation was confronted with an incalculable financial 
disaster. A timid man hedged round with academic 
restraints would have brought the city to ruin. Mr. 
Lloyd George seized the situation with the imaginative 
courage of a creative mind. The old foundations had 
gone. He had to extemporise new ones on the spot, 
and it was a task suited to his genius. A world 
in commotion is a world in which he is happy, for 
his passion for adventure is then least subject to 
restraint. 

Like Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Churchill, too, is 
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essentially a man of action, though in his extra- 
ordinarily various equipment the gifts of abstract 
speculation and philosophic detachment are not 
wanting. No one absorbs the atmosphere of a situa- 
tion more readily than he does, or exhales it with 
more intellectual conviction, or with a more assured 
grasp of underlying principles. But though he has a 
rare power of appeal to the popular mind, his sym- 
pathies are not engaged, and his interest in life is 
essentially the interest of the man of action and 
adventure. He brings into public life the spirit of 
the eternal boy, curious, eager, egoistic, intense. His 
career has been an astonishing hand-gallop through 
every realm of experience, war, literature, journalism, 
pleasure, travel, politics, and it is a source of unceasing 
wonder that with this furious activity of living he 
has been able to accumulate such stores of ordered 
thought, such an air of statesmanlike authority, such 
mastery of the whole instrument of political life. 
But through this versatility there runs always the 
outlook and spirit of the soldier, and he translates 
all the terms of politics into the strategy of the battle- 
field. His vision is picturesque and dramatic, and if 
in the drama of his mind he sees himself a colossal 
figure touching the skies it cannot be denied that his 
gifts are equal to his ambitions. He is more admired 
than trusted, for his amazing energy and impetus 
are felt to be the instruments of a purpose which is 
wayward, personal, and autocratic. But if on questions 
of policy he is regarded with some disquiet, in the 
executive field the powers of his mind, the swiftness 
and directness of his vision, and the spaciousness 
of his understanding are invaluable; and it is 
recognised that to his years of breathless activity at 
the Admiralty the wonderful preparedness of the 
Fleet for the great emergency that has come is, next, 

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of course, to the work of Lord Fisher, mainly due. 
His impetus of mind is a great asset, but it needs a 
powerful control, and there is a widespread view that 
Mr. Asquith's methods leave him too much latitude 
for independent action. 

The part which Lord Kitchener has played has 
been purely executive. His introduction to the 
Cabinet marked a new departure which was disliked 
by Liberals, but which was based on the wholly un- 
precedented situation. Lord Kitchener is a legend 
of strength and efficiency. The extraordinary 
dominion he has over the popular mind was in itself 
an asset of the first importance. If Kitchener was 
there, it was all right. If Kitchener wanted more 
men — well, more men there must be. It would be 
an interesting study to examine the growth of the 
legend and the materials out of which it has been 
fashioned. There are those who regard it as an 
interesting myth. Certainly the main credit for the 
extraordinary smoothness and rapidity with which 
the Expeditionary Force was despatched belongs not 
to Lord Kitchener, whose arrival on the scene was 
too late to influence the arrangements, but to the war 
machine created by Lord Haldane, who, for his 
reward, has been openly assailed in the Conservative 
press as a pro-German who ought to be out of office 
if not in the Tower. But whatever the future has to 
say in regard to Lord Kitchener as an administrator, 
there is no doubt as to the overwhelming value of 
his prestige, and the admirable loyalty with which, 
following his unfailing practice, he refused to allow 
his unprecedented position to be exploited for political 
purposes. 

There is no space here to deal with the other 
members of the Cabinet, but something needs to be 
said on the remarkable coherence that has dis- 

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tinguished it. That coherence is due to the confidence 
in Mr. Asquith and the spirit of loyalty that is 
universal in regard to his leadership. But for this 
fact there can be no doubt that the Cabinet would 
have collapsed like a house of cards at the shock of 
the crisis. It came with such appalling suddenness, 
the decision had to be so instant, and it had to be 
made by a Cabinet so passionately averse to war that 
the survival of the Ministry is still a matter for 
wonder. At first, I believe, it is true to say that none 
but the inner Cabinet were clear on the subject, and 
even so late as Sunday, August 2 — a day of almost 
incessant meetings — the dissentients were, if not in a 
majority, at least so numerous and so powerful that 
a coalition Cabinet seemed inevitable. But as the 
position of Belgium became more clear the opposition 
weakened, and in the end only two members of the 
Cabinet, Lord Morley and Mr. John Burns, resigned. 
It was a surprisingly small disruption in the presence 
of a crisis of such magnitude, and it left the position 
of the Government practically unaffected. This 
conveys no reflection upon the two dissentients. 
Neither of them has since made any public utterance 
on the subject, and we can only speculate upon the 
motives of their action ; but in both cases I think it 
will be found that the causes of disagreement are to 
be sought in events anterior to the immediate crisis, 
rather than in the facts of the crisis itself. In the case 
of Lord Morley a very powerful factor in his decision 
had undoubtedly no relevance to the duty of the 
country in the matter. He was the oldest member of 
the Cabinet, and for a long time his sensitive tempera- 
ment had chafed under the strain and irritations of 
office. When to the general surprise he took a seat in 
the House of Lords, he did so, as he said in a letter to 
Spence Watson, for two reasons, because he found the 

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pressure of life in the House of Commons made the 
fulfilment of the duties of his office too severe a task, 
and because, being childless, there was no question of 
a hereditary peerage. It is probable that in any case 
he would have found himself unequal to the strain of 
office during a prolonged struggle, and it was natural 
that, with his life-long devotion to the cause of 
humanity in its widest and least insular aspects, he 
should not desire to close his public career amidst the 
tumult of universal war. The reasons which operated 
in the case of Mr. Burns are less apparent, and not 
least apparent to those who know him best. That he 
was definitely opposed to intervention is certain; 
but it is equally certain that there were collateral 
causes, and among them the indisposition, as the first 
representative of Labour who had ever sat in a 
British Cabinet, to being associated with the conduct 
of a great war. 

It cannot be doubted that the survival of the 
Asquith Ministry practically intact at the time of the 
crisis was a fact of enormous value to the cause of 
the Allies. There was at the beginning of the war 
much speculation as to the advisability and proba- 
bility of a coalition Cabinet; but this passed away 
with the progress of events and the evidence of the 
extraordinary efficiency of the Government. There 
were no thinkable alternatives on the other side to 
the men filling the chief offices, and it did not seem 
possible for the Conservatives to accept simply a 
number of less important positions. Nor, indeed, did 
they desire office. Freedom from responsibility left 
them free to criticise, and free also from the odium 
which the conduct of a war usually brings upon a 
Government, however efficient and successful it may 
be. It is just to them to say that they have exercised 
their freedom with great restraint. The truce which 

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the war has brought about in party politics has been, 
so far, on the whole, very fairly observed. There has 
been no attempt to create difficulties for the Govern- 
ment, and a general and even generous recognition of 
their success. Moreover, although there has been 
no official intercourse between the front benches 
there has been much unofficial consultation. Mr. 
Austen Chamberlain, who was Chancellor of the 
Exchequer in the last Tory Administration, has 
accepted Mr. Lloyd George's invitation to place his 
experience at the service of the Treasury, and though 
he has preserved his full freedom to criticise, he has, 
with that touch of magnaminity which makes him 
so agreeable a figure in the public life of the 
country, cordially and even enthusiastically endorsed 
the measures which his successor in the chancellorship 
has adopted. 

As to the attitude of the House generally, it is 
one of almost unquestioning acceptance of the 
decisions of the Government. There has never 
been such a reign of absolutism in the land since 
the days of Stuarts, and the British people, like 
Robert Clive, may well be astonished at its own 
moderation — at the obedience with which it has 
surrendered liberties which it had thought were the 
breath of its existence, at its whispering humbleness 
in criticism, at its acceptance of an iron discipline of 
the press, at the unmurmuring instancy with which 
it gives whatever the Government asks without as 
much as requesting details. " We used to have more 
bother to get a vote for £1000 through committee 
than we have now to get a vote for £300,000,000," 
said one of the Government whips to me after Mr. 
Asquith had asked for the second vote of credit. 
It would be a mistake to argue from this strange spirit 
of compliance that the country has undergone any 

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loss of its traditions. It only means that it is over- 
shadowed by a peril that has blotted out temporarily 
all the ordinary separatisms of society, and that there 
is a universal disposition to avoid any spirit of nagging 
or querulousness, and to trust the Government 
absolutely with its destiny. 

III. THE COALITION CABINET 

The fall of the Liberal Government is as obscure 
in its causes as it was sudden. It did not proceed 
from any gust of public opinion, nor from any sense 
of failure, nor from any serious demand for a Coalition 
Administration. The confidence of the nation re- 
mained unimpaired, and although the attacks of The 
Morning Post and the Northcliffe Press upon in- 
dividual ministers had increased in bitterness, they 
did not represent any serious body of national thought 
or any strong movement within the House. Mr. 
Asquith himself was known to be averse to a recon- 
struction of the Cabinet, and less than a week before 
it actually took place he said, in reply to a question 
in Parliament, that he saw no reason for such a 
course, and thought it would not meet with am< 
general approval. But undoubtedly forces of disinte- 
gration had been at work. The curious episode in 
relation to drink and munitions had revealed a singular 
contrariety of opinion on the subject within the 
Cabinet. There seems no doubt that Mr. Lloyd 
George, in raising the incident, over-stated the facts 
as to the effect of drink on the production of muni- 
tions, and when Mr. Asquith went to Newcastle, 
praised the workmen, declared that there was no 
deficiency in the supply of munitions, and made no 
allusion to the drink question, the public mind was 
puzzled by what seemed like a very direct conflict 
between the Prime Minister and his chief lieutenant. 

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The situation was not improved by the discussions 
which were known to be proceeding within the 
Cabinet on the method of dealing with the drink 
problem. For a day or two prohibition was in the 
wind ; then came State purchase which for a moment 
seemed almost like going through; next, as the 
temperature lowered, came proposals for higher 
taxes on high percentages of alcohol, a scheme 
which brought Mr. Lloyd George into sharp conflict 
with the Irish. Finally, the mountain of discussion 
brought forth a mouse in the shape of the Immature 
Whisky Bill, which no one wanted but which was 
passed apparently as a sort of evidence that there 
had been something wrong which called for some 
sort of demonstration. All this bewildered the 
country; but it did not seriously disturb its mind. 
It, however, created an atmosphere congenial to 
change should events develop in that direction. 

And events were not slow to seize the occasion. 
They came in the form of two personal issues, one 
concerning the administration of the army, the other 
the administration of the navy. The Northcliffe 
Press, whose agitation had been so largely responsible 
for the appointment of Lord Kitchener, suddenly 
turned its guns on him, and, backed by a message 
from its military correspondent at the front, which 
seemed to have the authority of the commander in 
the field, declared that the wrong shells had been 
sent and that the Cabinet had been kept in ignorance 
by Lord Kitchener of what was happening about 
munitions. Both the manner and the source of the 
attack were deeply resented, but the Opposition 
made it clear that they intended to raise a discussion 
on the facts themselves. That would, of course, 
have meant a formal breach of the party truce. Mr. 
Asquith had two courses open to him. He could 
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accept the challenge, stand by his Cabinet, and in the 
ultimate event bring the question of an alternative 
government to the test by resigning, or he could make 
:erms with the Opposition and evade what he might 
regard as a dangerous public discussion. It is 
probable that he would have taken the stronger 
line but for the fact that at this moment the conflict 
between Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher, in regard to 
the Dardanelles expedition, also came to a head with 
the threatened resignation of the First Sea Lord. 
Faced with the double problem Mr. Asquith decided 
on a reconstruction of the Cabinet on coalition lines. 
The new Cabinet represents all parties with the 
exception of the Irish Nationalists. It has ex- 
changed its coherence and its familiarity with its 
tasks for a national character the value of which is 
purely speculative. In personnel it can hardly claim 
to have been seriously strengthened. The main 
elements are still those of the first Cabinet, and the 
changes that have been made have not been made 
with a view to increased efficiency but in order to 
include men whose claims, under the new conditions, 
could not be overlooked. The three most consider- 
able personal forces introduced into the Cabinet are 
Mr. Balfour, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Curzon. 
Mr. Balfour is the most fascinating and elusive figure 
in British politics. He is the philosopher in affairs 
and has been a conundrum alike to his friends and 
his foes, but never so much a conundrum as when his 
views were so simple that he could put them on half 
a sheet of notepaper. His supreme triumph was in 
keeping the leadership of his sundered party for two 
years without ever being betrayed into disclosing 
on which side of the fence he really stood. Such 
agility, perhaps, has never been seen in the egg- 
dance of politics. His dialectical ingenuity is a 

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delight to the House, but his grasp of facts is extra- 
ordinarily uncertain, and he dwells in a cloud of 
speculative doubt that seems to have no relation to 
the world of action. He had before the recon- 
struction been associated with Mr. Churchill in the 
work at the Admiralty, and is understood to have 
been a strong advocate of the first expedition to the 
Dardanelles. Lord Lansdowne is a distinct gain to 
the Cabinet. He has large experience of foreign 
affairs and represents the best traditions of that 
office. He has wisdom, knowledge, and sound judg- 
ment, and should be of real service to Sir Edward Grey 
in the difficult and complicated diplomacy of the 
Allies. Lord Curzon is the most interesting intro- 
duction. It is his first appearance in a British 
Cabinet, but his reputation has long been established. 
He has a powerful mind, great industry, and, in the 
opinion of so good a judge as Lord Morley, is the 
master of the best parliamentary style since Glad- 
stone. His administration in India revealed both 
his virtues and his defects, but the total effect of it 
was disastrous, for it reflected the spirit of Imperial- 
ism in its most flagrant form, and by its adoption of 
what Fox called the devil's maxim, " Divide et 
imp era," brought the country to the brink of revolu- 
tion from which it has been withdrawn by the wise 
and liberal policy of Lord Morley and Lord Hardinge. 
There are many puzzling things in the composition 
of the new Ministry. The appearance of Sir Edward 
Carson and Mr. F. E. Smith as the law officers of the 
crown furnishes a certain element of comic relief. A 
year before they were heading the " Civil War " in 
Ulster, and Sir Edward Carson publicly declared his 
readiness to break every law that stood in the way 
of his purpose. The poacher has never before made 
such a dramatic transition to the task of the game- 

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keeper. Whether the law will be able to survive such 
a triumphant jest may be questioned. The retention 
of Mr. Churchill in the Cabinet was a partial victory 
for him over Lord Fisher. At first it was understood 
that Mr. Churchill would not be in the new Ministry, 
and it was known that his retention in any office 
would mean the retirement of the First Sea Lord, who 
had come to the conclusion that Mr. Balfour plus 
Mr. Churchill was an arrangement no more favour- 
able to his control of the navy than Mr. Churchill 
plus Mr. Balfour had been. 

The flinging of Lord Haldane to the wolves is the 
outstanding scandal associated with the new ministry. 
No doubt his retirement was nominally voluntary, 
but that it should have been allowed to take place 
was a concession to the basest personal campaign that 
has disgraced the war. No man had done more, 
none, indeed, had done so much to prepare the 
country to meet the peril that overtook it last 
August. It was he who refashioned the army and 
created that great territorial machine which, had it 
been properly used by the War Office, would have 
saved the country from the waste, confusion, and 
scandals of the early months. It was he who gave 
the army the general staff and who elaborated that 
scheme of transport which, in enabling the British 
army to meet the first onrush of the Germans, con- 
tributed so largely to saving Europe from an early 
and overwhelming disaster. But he knew Germany, 
had studied its philosophy, had made friends with 
its philosophers, had lunched (as many others, from 
the King to Sir Edward Carson, had done) with 
the Kaiser, had even been to Germany in the interests 
of peace. For all these crimes he was pursued by the 
rabble of the press with a vulgar yelping of " Pro- 
German." Decency, to say nothing of gratitude, it 

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would have seemed would have forbidden any sur- 
render to such a squalid crusade. We do not know 
what efforts Mr. Asquith made to save his life-lonr 
friend from being sacrificed. But we know that he 
did not save him. It is an indelible stain upon his 
second Cabinet. 

IV. THE SHIPWRECK 

It is not difficult in these days to understand the 
emotions of that April night in the Atlantic when the 
Titanic went down. Humanit}^ is passing through a 
somewhat similar experience. It has struck a rock, 
and we are all engaged in building rafts — military, 
social, financial rafts — and putting on lifebelts and 
saving any little treasure we can from the wreckage. 
The ship that rode the waves so securely and seemed 
built for all time and all weathers has gone to pieces 
like a house of cards at the touch of universal war, 
and we have to improvise any means we can for 
keeping afloat. Each of us in our several ways is 
called upon to face issues that were undreamed of in 
that light-hearted world we dwelt in but yesterday. 

Things went very well then. We had our troubles, 
no doubt, spoke ill of life and thought we were rather 
badly used. Shares showed an incurable tendency to 
fall, trade was not what it had been, there was that 
interminable revolution in Mexico — savage, barbaric 
Mexico : so different from our civilised Europe — and 
above all there was the shadow over Ireland, with its 
Gough episodes and its gun-running, to disturb us. 
But the deck was sound beneath our feet, and our 
private sorrows and public discontents did not differ 
in kind from the sorrows and discontents we had 
learned to regard as a normal condition of this strange 
adventure of life. 

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Now we are all swallowed up in a common ruin. 
The whole machinery of civilisation has been milita- 
rised, and from the Orkneys to Japan all the energies 
of men are turned to the task of feeding the flame of 
war that is scorching the face of Europe. The social 
displacement has been so cataclysmal that few of us 
know what is going to happen to us. I do not; you 
do not. We are all adrift together. The professions 
or trades that we have pursued so industriously and 
perhaps prosperously seem to have little relevance to 
the armed camp in which we live, and the soldier is 
the only man to-day who is quite sure that the world 
of the Christian kings has need of him. " The lordliest 
life on earth " has taken possession of the earth and 
Mr. Kipling may contemplate its fruits with what 
emotion he may. They are many. The dead, I read, 
lie so thick in Charleroi that they are piled high on 
the pavements of the streets, " facing earth or facing 
sky," Germans and French and Belgians lying still 
in the great comradeship of death, awaiting a common 
burial. And thousands like them litter the cornfields 
of Belgium, the marshes of East Prussia, the plains of 
Sclavonia. They are only the first-fruits of the 
harvest. And the Kaiser telegraphs to the Crown 
Princess, " I rejoice with you in Wilhelm's first 
victory. How magnificently God supported him/' 
Let him rejoice. When we have victory let us rejoice 
also. But in the name of that decency which this 
man outrages, let us keep God's name from our lips 
in our rejoicing. 

But it is not the dead who are the true victims of 
the shipwreck of Europe. It is the living. From Cape 
Grisnez to the Urals there is not a home where the 
shadow of war does not darken the threshold — hardly 
a home where the breadwinner is seen no more. The 
great felled trees lie on the hillsides of the Black 

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Forest with none to yoke the oxen and take the 
shining boles down the valleys to the waterways, and 
in the Dauphine the patches of corn that have 
ripened on the almost inaccessible ledges of the 
mountains stand uncut, for the bronzed Dauphinois 
has gone to another harvest field and only the women 
and children are left to wait and hope and fear. And 
so over the whole face of the Continent. The manhood 
of Europe is on the battlefields and all the sunshine 
of millions and tens of millions of homes is in eclipse, 
and all the fruits of happy industry are left to rot 
or are going to feed the monster that possesses the 
earth. 

It seems a little futile, perhaps, to talk about the 
future while we are still stunned and struggling. 
You are not concerned about the theories of water- 
tight compartments when the boat is going down. 
It is time to discuss them when you have got safe 
ashore. And in the same way we cannot think of the 
causes of the catastrophe that has overwhelmed us 
or of the lessons to be drawn from it while we are 
still in the suck of the maelstrom. The time for 
controversy has not yet come — cannot come until the 
peril has passed and we are free to ask questions and 
quarrel with each other in the old jolly way. But in 
the meantime we are going through experiences which 
will have a profound impression on human society. 
When the shipwreck is over and we set about rebuild- 
ing civilisation the world will find itself in possession 
of a most unsuspected stock of ideas. Great move- 
ments of thought are always independent of our con- 
scious volition. They are driven, like the tides, by 
external stimulus, and the events through which we 
are passing are changing the orientation of thought. 
You cannot go into the House of Commons in these 
days without realising that we are passing through an 

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internal revolution as well as a world crisis. We have 
got right down to the bedrock of things, and all the 
nice scheme of special privileges, vested interests, 
private prerogatives, is swept away. The individual 
has gone under. There is only one life, the life of the 
State, that concerns us, and Sir Frederick Banbury 
seems to represent ideas that belong to another 
state of existence. The only political doctrine extant 
is the doctrine of the collective necessity. We are 
discovering that in the face of that necessity we have 
no individual rights or possessions that the State 
cannot resume almost without so much as a " by your 
leave." 

A friend of mine saw a milkman with his horse and 
cart going his rounds the other day in a Midland 
town. The man was stopped by an agent of the 
Government, who ran his eye over the horse, approved 
it, named the price he would give for it, told the 
owner to take it out of the shafts, and forthwith led 
it away, leaving the man with his horseless milkcart 
to complete his rounds as best he could. He had 
learned rather abruptly the lesson we are all learning 
in our several ways, that in the ultimate analysis we 
own nothing and the State owns all. It can take our 
money to the last penny, it can restrict our liberties 
until we are little better than prisoners of war, it can 
appropriate our institutions with a stroke of the pen, 
in the final necessity it can take our lives to the last 
drop of our blood. 

We have talked for generations about the national- 
isation of railways and have found the scheme too 
vast to tackle. We woke up one morning to find that 
the companies had been dispossessed of their control, 
that the twelve hundred directors had been sent out 
to play, and that the whole railway system of the 
country was subject to the Government. And the 

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transition seemed so natural and proper that no one 
even " wrote to the papers about it." At the impact 
of a great occasion the whole theory of railway 
ownership and control collapses without a murmur. 
It is seen that the sole ultimate function of the rail- 
ways is to serve the State, and that anything that 
interferes with that function in a time of emergency 
is brushed aside as lightly as a feather. The lesson will 
serve for future use. By a flash of lightning, as it 
were, it has revealed the true relation of the railways 
to the community, and that relation is as applicable 
to conditions of peace as to conditions of war. 

And so with many other political phases of this 
extraordinary time. You may see Parliament con- 
structing a new social fabric while you wait — all on a 
collective basis. I can almost hear Mr. Sidney Webb 
purring as he looks on at the swift and silent revolu- 
tion. War has done more in a week or two to bring 
his ideas into practice than the industrious propa- 
ganda of years. I went into the House of Commons 
the other afternoon, and in the course of half-an-hour 
I heard a series of Bills rushed through their several 
stages without discussion and almost without com- 
ment, giving powers to the State which in normal 
times would freeze the blood of Mr. Harold Cox. 
There has never been such a political tour de force in 
the history of this land. 

And it is remarkable that whatever the subject, 
the emergency exit is always collectivism. Take the 
question of finance. Walter Besant said long ago that 
the art of banking consisted in taking other people's 
money and using it for your own profit. In a general 
way we knew that the satire was not very extravagant, 
but the system worked and there seemed no real 
conflict between finance which is the symbol and 
commerce which is the reality. 

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But the time of stress has brought a swift disillusion. 
It is found that the private control of the sources of 
money supply may have disastrous effects upon 
industry in a crisis — that just when money is most 
needed for trade it may be withheld for private and 
even selfish reasons. Many of the banks behaved well, 
and others behaved badly; but the disco very that 
any of them could hoard not their own money, but 
other people's money, and keep it out of use at a 
moment when its use was the most urgent need of 
society, showed that the present financial system is 
false. Already the State has had to come to the relief 
of the situation. Mr. Lloyd George has given the banks 
the credit of the national Treasury, that is, the 
security of the whole nation for their operations. 
But obviously the matter cannot rest there. If the 
banks are only institutions for making profits for 
their shareholders in times of prosperity, and close 
their purses when the pinch comes, only opening 
them on our collective security, it is clear that the 
function of the State in the sphere of finance is 
paramount, and that it must exercise that function 
when times are good as well as when times are 
bad. 

But it is not only political thought that is being 
changed under the urgent whip of necessity. The 
whole nation is being tempered in the furnace. 
Touched to new issues the world that will emerge will 
be a world that will be new and strange. There will 
be a chasm between us and our past unlike anything 
else in history. It will be as if generations of normal 
change have been swallowed up in the abyss. The 
old landmarks will have gone; the things that used 
to seem important will have become negligible; 
social relationships will have been transformed; 
ideas that were infinitelv remote will have burgeoned, 

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as it were, in a night — nothing will be quite as it used 
to be. Humanity will have opened not a new chapter, 
but a new age. It will be like him who looked out over 

" a universal blank of Nature's works, 
To him expunged and razed; " 

but it will be a blank upon which we shall write the 
future in new terms and in a new language. 

It will be a profoundly serious world — not serious 
in the sense that it will not recover its gaiety when the 
humiliation of this debauch of savagery has passed; 
but serious in the sense of those who have escaped 
from the wreck and have had a blinding revelation of 
the frailty of the structure upon which the fortunes 
of humanity are embarked. We shall hear no more 
of the Cubists and the Futurists, and all the little 
artificial cults that used to amuse us with their 
affectations of gravity. They have gone in the 
general conflagration. We shall be concerned not 
about the decorations of life; but about its founda- 
tions, and shall have no taste for the conflict of the 
Little-endians and the Big-endians. Indeed, they 
will have no taste for it themselves. 

For the world has gone to a school that will change 
all its scheme of values. Think of it : twenty million 
men, drawn from every great European country and 
from every class of society — from the field and the 
factory, the office, the law-court, the University, the 
Church — are engaged in the business of slaughtering 
each other as the instruments of some power that 
they do not control, of policies they do not under- 
stand, of causes too obscure and involved to be 
unravelled. Day by day they see the sodden or frost- 
bound earth strewn with the bodies of their dead 
comrades or their dead enemies. They have no 
personal animus against those enemies. They never 

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met them until now, and in the brief moments of 
truce — as when Christmas came like the ghost of 
some dream world into their midst — they exchanged 
greetings and tokens and found each other just 
ordinary, companionable men, desiring no revenge 
and no blood, but just wishing to be back to their 
homes, their tasks, and their familiar ways. 

Now these men, who are passing through this 
tremendous experience, are not ignorant boors. 
They can read and write; they can think and talk; 
they can ask questions and demand answers. The 
Russian, it is true, is illiterate (to the great joy of the 
mediaeval soul of Mr. Stephen Graham), but even 
he will not escape the lessons of this fierce school. 
And for the rest, English and Germans, French, 
Austrians, and Hungarians — they have the tradition 
of generations of universal education, of industrial 
organisation, of familiarity with newspapers and 
books and politics. They have gone into this hell with 
the capacity to learn, understand, and question. 
They will not come out as they went in. They will 
return from the war seasoned men and thinking 
citizens — men who have seen the very skeleton of 
civilisation face to face, the gaunt bones, as it were, 
stripped of all the fair disguises of elaborate social 
distinction and diplomatic pretence. They will come 
back with a new light in the mind and a sense of 
authority that they never had before. And they will 
come back with the vote. 

A new England is being brought to birth in the 
trenches of Flanders. The life of three million men, the 
flower of the nation, is being revolutionised. That 
young man who has gone from the plough will not re- 
turn to the plough on the same conditions. He has 
made a discovery. Up to August last he seemed of 
rather less importance than the cattle in the fields, for 

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they always were well fed and well stalled, while his 
whole life had been a struggle with grinding poverty. 
Suddenly he is exalted high above the cattle. He is a 
person of consequence. The statesman, the squire, 
the parson, the magistrate — all become his suitors. 
He is dressed for the first time in good clothes and 
good boots; he is well fed and well housed; he has 
pocket money; if he has a wife and children they are 
better off than they ever were before ; if he dies, their 
future will be assured as it would never have been 
assured had he lived. It is all like a miracle. The 
discovery he has made is that when the real emergency 
comes his life is as valuable to the State as any life. 
And the thought that is dawning on him is this: 
If I am so necessary to the State in time of war, the 
State must be just to me in time of peace when I am 
doing its work no less worthily and no less vitally 
than on the battlefield. 

This change of outlook affects the city clerk as 
much as the village labourer. A young man, writing 
home from the front to his parents, concludes thus: 
" No more office work for me." He spoke the thought 
that is shaping itself in many minds. There has been 
a breach with the past : new tastes have been acquired, 
new ideas of life and its realities have come to birth, 
new demands for self-expression will issue from 
thousands of lips. What are we doing to prepare to 
meet those demands — the demands of those, for 
example, who say, " No more office work for me," 
and who will insist either here or elsewhere on the 
life of the open air and fruitful labour? The land 
question has been blanketed just when it is more 
urgent than ever — just when we are realising how 
true was the dictum of Froude that " that State is 
strongest which has the largest proportion of its 
people in direct contact with the soil." 

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There is another and still more fundamental theme 
that will emerge from the shipwreck. In a real sense 
it is the only thing that matters. We have been like 
children playing on the top of a volcano. We have 
busied ourselves with schemes of social reconstruc- 
tion and have flattered ourselves that we were making 
this land a little better, a little happier, a little more 
just for the people who dwell in it. We knew no more 
of what was going on inside the volcano than if we 
were dwelling in Mars. But it was there that our fate 
was being fashioned by a small body of diplomatists 
and officials whose very names are unknown to the 
general public, who cannot be heard in public, or 
examined in public, or dismissed by the public. We 
have discovered that with all our constitutional 
rights, the greatest interest of this country is as much 
outside our control as the revolutions of the solar 
system. 

Bagehot long ago commented on the anomaly 
that Parliament, which has control over laws, has 
no power in the making of war or peace or of 
treaties upon which the whole existence of the State 
may rest. Palmerston carried the doctrine so far as to 
say that it was not necessary even to communicate 
with Parliament on these things. It was not until 
twenty-four hours before the declaration of war that 
Parliament and the British public learned that for 
seven years this country had been discussing joint 
military and naval action with France. This secrecy 
is incident to a system of diplomatic relationship that 
has remained unchanged in spite of the revolution 
that has taken place in the real relationships of 
European society. Commerce and finance have become 
international, the credit system has made the world 
one, labour has moved towards the ideal of a world- 
wide sympathy, democracy has established itself 

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as the vital principle of human government, social 
and intellectual intercourse, influenced by the 
achievements of science which have annihilated space, 
has become universal — everything in short has 
tended to the foundation of a world society motived by 
common interests and conducting its affairs with open 
and honourable directness. Only in one sphere has 
the tradition that we have outgrown remained. The 
peoples have moved towards a world fraternity, but 
they have not carried their governments with them, 
and secret diplomacy has in the end wrecked the 
fabric of human society. Can Europe again tolerate 
that peril ? Can we ever again play about on the deck 
with the sails and the compasses while down in the 
hold there is a powder magazine and a lighted match, 
the very existence of which we are not permitted to 
know ? Secret diplomacy belongs to the traditions of 
personal and autocratic government. It is fatal to 
democracy, and the ultimate decision of the war will 
be whether democracy, with its free and universal air, 
or autocracy, armed with the sword and burrowing 
with secret diplomacy, is to control the destinies of 
men. 



V. THE LEGEND OF ARCHANGEL 

It is said that when Lord Kitchener made his first 
demand for 500,000 men he believed that it would be 
futile, and that only conscription would give him the 
army that he needed. If that is so he gravely mis- 
apprehended the spirit of the country. It rose to the 
height of the great argument with a passion all the 
more impressive for its freedom from any shallow 
emotion either of jingoism or hate. Those who recall 
the frenzies and vulgarities of the Boer War find it 
difficult to associate them with a people so sober and 

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undemonstrative. The spirit with which the sudden 
peril has been met is the more remarkable because, 
unlike the Continental peoples, we are not habituated 
to the presence of the shadow of war. It is more than 
a century since the fear of invasion fell on us, and the 
coming of the terror might reasonably have tried our 
nerves. But the country has kept its head, its temper, 
and its courage. Its spirit is well illustrated by an 
incident which Mr. T. W. Russell related to me — 
an incident which deserves to companion that of the 
Roman mother. He was speaking to a woman whose 
three sons are on battleships in the North Sea, and 
he ventured to speak words of sympathy and comfort 
to her. " I wish I had ten sons," she answered, " and 
that they were all fighting for their country." Our 
sons will be all right while they have such mothers. 

And not the least gratifying feature is the cheerful- 
ness with which financial and business disasters, 
which in normal times would seem so overwhelming, 
are being borne. I know men who have been ruined 
by the crisis, whose business is with the Continent, 
and who have seen the fabric of their prosperity 
collapse into the dust; but you would not know it 
from their bearing. We find that we do not worry 
about the toothache when the house is on fire, that 
material losses count little when the deeper things 
of life are at stake. The nation is sounding the great 
waters, and learning very unusual lessons — lessons of 
mutual dependence, of self-sacrifice, of helpfulness 
and tolerance and goodwill. We are not so petty as 
we were yesterday. Perhaps some of us in the early 
days ran to the banks to get heaps of gold, and some 
to the grocers to buy up sacks of flour, but if so we are 
rather ashamed of the fact and would not care for 
it to be known. But for the most part we are sensible 
and are concerned for once with something bigger 

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than the safety of our own skins and the fullness of our 
own pockets. 

But this essential calm does not mean that the 
country is insensible to the dangers that envelop it. 
It is profoundly anxious — how anxious is shown by 
the rumours that agitate it with fear or hope. The 
most wonderful of these rumours is the legend of 
Archangel. In the happy future, when the madness 
has passed and peace has returned to the earth, 
learned men will trace the legend to its source and 
reveal the seed of the prodigious growth that over- 
spread the world. 

The first indirect allusion to it that I have been 
able to trace was in the first week of the war when, 
amid the breathless secrecy that enveloped all the 
intentions of the War Office, the public mind was 
chiefly occupied with the question whether an 
Expeditionary Force was being sent to Belgium. 
Among those who were confident on this point was a 
member of a great shipping firm in the City. He knew 
that an Expeditionary Force was on its way; but 
it was not on its way to Belgium. To France, then? 
No, nor to France. Not to Belgium, not to France ? 
Where, then, in the name of wonder? It was on its 
way to Russia. And he met the natural incredulity 
with his evidence — the Government had comman- 
deered enormous shipping transport for dispatch to 
Archangel in the White Sea. If it was not to carry 
soldiers what was -its purpose? And if soldiers, who 
but British soldiers? 

That was probably the beginning. It contained two 
essentials of the legend — the transport of an army 
and the mention of Archangel. Its weak point was, 
of course, the assumption that the Army to be trans- 
ported to Archangel was the British Army. That 
was still incredible, and with the official announce- 

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ment of the landing in France it was finally disposed 
of. But in the meantime a new and more intelligible 
aspect had been given to the story. It was a Russian 
Army coming from Archangel, not an English Army 
going there. Who supplied that final touch of verisi- 
militude to "a bald and otherwise unconvincing 
narrative " cannot be known. Probably it was no 
one in particular. The legend simply grew out of the 
mystery and intensity of those early days. 

It grew in a favourable atmosphere. The capacity 
of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe 
is great at all times. That fact is the basis of all the 
myths of the ages. Looking out on the mystery of the 
wheeling universe, the magic of night and day, the 
pageant of the seasons, the miracle of life and death, 
men have conceived explanatory ideas and have 
found no difficulty in making the facts conform to 
them. We are all more or less subject to this dominion 
of the idea over the facts. When Falstaff described 
his battle with the men in buckram he did not 
deliberately lie. He had a romantic vision of himself 
as a hero fighting fearful odds, and he made the facts 
worthy of the vision. He believed them as George IV. 
is said to have believed that he won the Battle of 
Waterloo. 

Now at the time the rumour of the Russian Army 
began to fill the air the public mind was in a condition 
that made it peculiarly accessible to an idea that 
promised help. The great war machine of the Kaiser 
was beginning to move, and all the world was awaiting 
the result with anxiety. In this country there was no 
fear of the ultimate issue, but there was much doubt 
as to the early course of events, and the hint that 
immediate assistance was possible from another 
source fell on soil wonderfully prepared to receive it. 

And when the first disposition to reject the idea 
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as novel and fantastic had passed, it was seen to 
be neither novel nor fantastic. Given the command 
of the sea, the facilities of transport and the supply 
of men, there was nothing impracticable in the 
scheme. And as to its novelty — it was nearly two 
centuries old. For in the reputed will of Peter the 
Great, which was first published in 1749, and in 
which very elaborate instructions, couched in the 
spirit of Machiavelli and Bernhardi, were left for 
promoting the greatness of Russia, there was the 
suggestion that at a critical moment two expeditions 
should be prepared, one in the Sea of Azov, the other 
at Archangel, and launched against the western 
seaboard of Europe. 

There has never been any rumour like it. We are 
accustomed to suppose that the only medium of news 
in the widespread sense is the newspaper. Travellers 
tell us, it is true, of the astonishing speed with which 
tidings will spread among uncivilised peoples — a 
speed which seems to outstrip any apparent means of 
communication and to have almost the fleetness and 
invisibility of the wind. It is a sort of sixth sense 
which sophisticated peoples have lost. But here was 
a rumour that swept the country from John o' Groats 
to Land's End — a rumour that, unlike any other 
rumour that we have known, owed nothing to the 
suggestion of print. For in this amazing time the 
journalist, whose business it is to tell everything he 
knows and sometimes even more than he knows, has 
discovered a golden gift of reticence. He does not 
need the help of the Press Bureau to be as secret as 
the grave when secrecy is vital. And so, while every 
office was throbbing with the mystery, there was no 
hint in the newspapers that they had ever heard of 
such a place as Archangel. 

Meanwhile that blessed word was in every mouth. 
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Like the poet, Archangel woke up one morning to 
find itself famous. It became a grievance against the 
war-map makers that they had cut off Europe just 
where it became really romantic and interesting. 
They had left out the White Sea and the North Cape 
and the Arctic Circle — everything in fact about which 
we were most ignorant and most concerned. For just 
as the war had blotted out the weather as the staple of 
conversation, so Archangel almost blotted out the 
war. Men must dispute about something in this 
imperfect world, and since all the ordinary political 
topics of controversy had vanished, they seized on 
this fascinating theme for conflict. They fought with 
the passion of the Big-endians and the Little-endians. 
As on all questions of faith, Society became divided 
into Believers and Unbelievers. There was the Pro- 
Russian party and the No-Russian party, the idealists 
and the realists, stern, unbending zealots who would 
yield no inch to the enemy, and around them were 
the hosts of the Mugwumps, swayed now to this side, 
now to that. 

And all the while the very air was eloquent with 
evidence. It came from every quarter of the compass 
and in every form of personal witness. There was 
the Glasgow shipowner whose vessels had been 
mysteriously wafted away to the Northern seas, and 
the mayor of the northern seaport who had told a 
correspondent with significant mystery of the arrival 
of vast consignments of butter from Archangel, and 
as he said the word " butter " he looked to be bursting 
with secret knowledge. There were the Americans 
who could not return home because the great liners, 
the Lusitania, the Mauretania, and the rest had been 
disembowelled and sent to Archangel. An Oxford 
professor told you of the college don who had been 
summoned to the station to interpret for the Russians 

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who were passing through, and your favourite aunt — 
a woman of unimpeachable veracity and common- 
sense — assured you she had seen the Cossacks water- 
ing their horses at Bedford Station. The Norwegian 
journalist in London could tell you of the Norwegian 
captain who had seen the Russians being disembarked 
at Aberdeen, and your neighbour on the magisterial 
bench had had a letter from an officer at Salisbury 
Plain in which he spoke of his work in connection 
with the thousands of Russians who had been sent 
thither to recruit after their long sea- voyage. The 
early bus-driver coming down Kilburn High Road had 
seen the hosts of Russia marching to Paddington, 
and the " knocker-up " of the policeman had the 
assurance of that functionary that he had been 
summoned thus early to the station because the 
Russians were passing through. There was the man 
who showed you the letter from his son who had seen 
40,000 Russians embark at a southern seaport. 
Could he disbelieve his son ? And could you disbelieve 
his son's father? From Southampton you learned 
that no one doubted because everyone knew, and 
letters from Rochdale and Stafford, Gloucester and 
Crewe, and a multitude of other places spoke of the 
passage of the Russians as if the fact were no more 
disputable than the Decalogue. Every event hinged 
on Archangel. What was the Oceanic doing in the 
strange waters where it was wrecked? What was 
the battle of Heligoland Bight except a diversion to 
cover the transport of the troops across the North 
Sea? And meanwhile the railways were closed for 
days and trains thundered through hour by hour, 
day and night, with drawn blinds and heavy burdens. 
Who could these hosts be and from whence could they 
come? 

Private denials from Cabinet Ministers of course 



The Asquith Cabinets 

only made the thing more clear to the Believers. 
What could they do but deny — even if they knew? 
And was it not possible that from some of them 
the truth was hidden ? For rumour has a faculty of 
making even opposition serve its purposes. And not 
all Ministers denied whole-heartedly, and there were 
members of their own family who doubted them even 
when they appeared whole-hearted. 

It seemed at last that the Believers had carried 
the day and at this moment the whisper that deafened 
our ears first found its way into print, clothed in 
significant mystery. " There is also no doubt present 
in Lord Kitchener's calculations," said a London 
newspaper in its leader columns, " another formidable 
factor, which for military reasons we forbear to 
mention, but which, when its existence is disclosed, 
may, we venture to think, stagger Europe." It was 
cautious and discreet, but at last Rumour had a 
printed word to rest on. And when, a few days later, 
a message from Rome, stating that it was " officially " 
announced that Russian troops had arrived in 
England for France, was passed for publication by the 
Press Bureau and appeared in the evening news- 
papers, the Believers faced the Unbelievers in a spirit 
of unmitigated triumph. 

But their pride was short-lived, and a week later 
the tide turned against them. A message from 
Belgium drew from the Press Bureau the following 
statement : 

" There is no truth whatever in the rumours that Russian 
soldiers have landed in, or passed through, Great Britain 
on their way to France or Belgium. 

" The statements that Russian troops are now on Belgian 
or French soil should be discredited." 

If the intention was to get rid of the fable by one 
decisive " whiff of grapeshot," the last sentence was 

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badly phrased. To say that a thing " should be 
discredited " was to leave an option to the reader. 
It was not so short as " untrue •' and certainly not 
nearly so final. 

It was not surprising therefore to find that the Pro- 
Russian party were still unmoved and that they 
pointed to the equivocal denial almost as a new 
confirmation of their faith. The desire to believe 
became less urgent as the German Army fell back 
from the Marne, and as the weeks went by without a 
sign the phantom faded into thin air and was forgotten. 

But the legend of the army that sailed from Arch- 
angel to England and passed through it (with drawn 
blinds) and vanished from our southern shores as 
mysteriously as it arrived on our northern coast will 
remain. It will provide for posterity a speculation as 
interesting as that as to the reasons for the failure of 
Grouchy to appear on the field of Waterloo. Was he 
also a mirage of the mind? The legend will take its 
place with that of the Flying Dutchman, and the 
phantom army will perhaps sail the seas for ever in 
the phantom ship. It has come as near being a fact 
as any fiction can. But the true interest of the legend 
is psychological rather than historical. It offers the 
most striking instance in our time of the growth of a 
myth, and it throws a curious light on the origin of 
the myths that have developed in the past out of the 
terrors, anxieties, and hopes of peoples fumbling 
darkly for an explanation of an inexplicable world. 
It could only have survived in circumstances in which 
the Press had become artificially silent and had ceased 
to bring Rumour to the challenge of definite proof. 
For the true twilight of the gods came with the 
printing press. Mythology and the newspaper cannot 
co-exist. 



102 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

AND THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE 

It is more interesting to know what your enemy says 
of vou than what your friends say. It is even more 
important. For the aim of your friend is to shield 
you : the aim of your enemy is to unmask you ; and 
though he may be unscrupulous and mendacious in 
the task he will help you to a truer understanding 
of yourself than all the adulation of your friends, 
just as most the savage of caricatures may be more 
revealing than the most flattering of portraits. 

Now the enemies of General Joffre call him 
" General Two - divisions - short - and - Two - minutes 
late/' It sounds a formidable indictment. If we 
accepted it au pied de la lettre, there would seem to 
be nothing more to be said, for it would predicate 
the most complete incapacity for generalship that 
could be conceived. But while the phrase reflects a 
certain truth, it reflects it only as the distorting mirror 
reflects the human form, preserving a sort of grotesque 
likeness in the midst of its wild exaggerations. The 
truth which is caricatured may be best expressed by 
trimming the name to that of General Caution. That, 
stripped of its malice, is what the phrase means. It 
means that, in the opinion of his critics, General 
Joffre's caution is excessive, that he avoids risks that 
ought to be taken, that he allows opportunities that 
ought to be seized to pass without profit, that, in the 
language of Scotland, he is " gey slow in the uptakV 

It is an arguable view on which time alone can give 
the final judgment. General Joffre would himself 

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probably admit that he is the least adventurous 
general who ever played a great part on the stage of 
war. The famous phrase attributed to him, about 
"nibbling" at the enemy ("Je les grignotte "), 
expresses very truly the spirit of his policy. It is not 
merely that his genius is static rather than dynamic ; 
it is that his temperament is severely serious and 
untheatrical. There is a common disease in these 
days which one may call Napoleonism. It afflicts a 
certain type of person of great executive capacity 
and boundless ambition, but little moral ballast or 
social conscience. It is a very dangerous disease, and 
anyone who surrounds himself with busts of Napoleon 
is prima facie suspect. 

From this disease no one is more entirely free than 
General Joffre. It was said of Campbell-Bannerman, 
of whom, allowing for differences of race and training, 
he is reminiscent, that he had talked less nonsense 
than any man of his time. General Joffre not only 
talks no nonsense : he thinks none. His habit of mind 
is plain to pedestrianism, and his view of his pro- 
fession is as practical as that of a plumber. No one 
could be more remote from the military tradition of 
his country. The tradition of France is the tradition 
of the romance of war just as the tradition of Prussia 
is the tradition of the business of war. Frederick the 
Great prided himself on the fact that, while his 
French opponent took the field with a hundred cooks, 
he took the field with a hundred spies. Even Napoleon, 
though no more forgetful than Frederick of the 
business of war, knew how to exploit its " glory " 
and to fire his soldiery with histrionic appeals to their 
imaginative and romantic sense. 

Now General Joffre, although he was born in the 
hot South, is as dour as a Scotch elder, as unemotional 
as Wellington or Washington. There is, I think, only 
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General Joftre 



one recorded address by him to his army. It was that 
which he made when, after the famous retreat from 
Charleroi, his army had taken up the position on the 
Marne. It was the crisis of the war, and Joffre spoke 
the one public word that has fallen from his lips. It 
was characteristic in its directness and brevity. 
\ * You must be prepared to die rather than yield 
ground. Weakness will not be tolerated." 

This cold, undemonstrative temper is significant 
of much. It shows that General Joffre is not out for 
popularity, has no Napoleonic designs. That, as will 
be seen later, is a fact of profound importance. 
It is significant, too, of the change that has come 
over the whole spirit and method of war. The art 
of war is governed by the material of war, and the 
discoveries of recent years have revolutionised the 
conception of the art. The element of surprise has 
vanished with the use of the aeroplane, wireless, 
and the telephone. The wonderful Ulm-Austerlitz 
campaign of Napoleon would have been impossible 
with the conditions of to-day. Equally impossible 
would have been Stonewall Jackson's march by the 
plank road that won the Battle of Chancellors ville, 
or his brilliant exploit at Thoroughfare Gap. 

We have seen again and again, in the course of this 
war, how difficult it is, even with the most rigorous 
suppression of news, for a commander to effect a 
vital movement in secret, unless one side has an 
overwhelming advantage in military railways as 
is the case with Germany on the Polish frontier. 
The transfer of the English army from the Aisne to 
Flanders was carried out with the most elaborate 
precautions; but in vain. The Germans were there as 
soon as the British. Moreover, the enormous develop- 
ment in artillery has not only made the fortress 
obsolete, but has changed the character of fighting 

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in the open from a swift clash of infantry and cavalry 
to a slow struggle for entrenchments. Add to all this 
the gigantic scale of the armies and the vast line of 
battle, and it will be seen that the art of generalship 
has fundamentally changed. You could walk over 
the field of Waterloo in a morning, but it would 
take you many weeks to walk over the field of battle 
that extends from the Vosges to the Yser. When 
Napoleon ordered the advance of the Imperial Guard 
at Waterloo, he had the whole field of battle and all 
the conditions in view; but the French advance at 
Soissons in March was only part of a scheme which 
included the English advance at Neuve Chapelle, a 
hundred miles away, and considerations as remote 
as the situation in Alsace and Hindenburg's new 
lunge at Warsaw from the north. The corollary of 
this is that the commander is no longer a personality, 
but an abstraction — not a visible inspiration, but a 
thought working in some remote background, with 
maps and telephones, aeroplanes and wireless. 
General Joffre's greatness is shown in his appreciation 
of the new conditions, and his stern rejection of the 
old ostentation of generalship which was proper to 
" a creed out-worn." 

But the main significance of this aloofness and 
sobriety goes deeper than this. The temper of General 
Joffre reflects a profound change in the spirit of 
France. Like Lord Kitchener, the French Commander 
had his first experience of war in the tragic year of 
1870, when, as a lad from the Ecole Poly technique, 
he did active service with a battery during the siege 
of Paris. How deeply the iron of that terrible winter 
burned itself into the soul of France is evident in 
the stress of to-day. Every observer agrees in com- 
menting on the changed temper of the country, its 
freedom from excitement and alarms, its quiet 
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General Joffre 



General Joffre 



gravity as of a nation steeled to endure the worst 
blows of fortune. ^ 

How different it all is from the levity of 1870, 
when France danced out gaily to the cry of "a 
Berlin ! " and in a few short weeks saw her armies 
shattered by a series of defeats without parallel in 
history. Even in the midst of that frightful over- 
throw, the spirit of Paris was true to its past. It 
plunged into a revolution and swept away the shoddy 
structure of Imperialism; but even in that thrilling 
time it mingled a wild and irresponsible gaiety with 
its panics and despairs. It laughed at its miseries 
and greeted the surrender of Bazaine with a great 
Boulevard jest: " Bazaine a enfin opere sa jonction 
avec MacMahon! " they said. And in the midst of 
the siege all Paris could make a joke of General 
Trochu and his famous " plan " — that plan which 
he would never reveal, but which was to work a 
miracle, and which he had deposited with his notary, 
Me. Ducloux. The whole city laughed about it, and 
sang songs deriding it thus: 

" Je sais le plan de Trochu, 

Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan! 
Mon Dieu ! Quel beau plan ! 
Je sais le plan de Trochu: 
Grace a lui rien n'est perdu, 

Quand sur du beau papier blanc 

II eut ecrit son affaire, 
II alia porter son plan 

Chez maitre Ducloux, notaire. 

C'est la qu'est l'plan de Trochu, 
Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan," etc. 

Bismarck, waiting grimly outside, was sure of his 
estate ; but Paris would not be denied its laugh, even 
though it was at its own misfortunes and its own 
preposterous Generals. Perhaps young Joffre joined 
in the laugh too, but he learned the lesson of that 

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gigantic frivolity, and France learned it with him. 
It is to-day the most serious nation in Europe. The 
roles are reversed. It is Germany which is filled with 
boasting and which set out with the cry of " a Paris " ; 
it is France which waits the issue, with white lips, 
perhaps, but with a still tongue and a fixed purpose. 
It has lost its gaiety, but it has found its soul. 

And General Joffre is a symbol of the victory. I 
think he is an assurance, too, that France will keep its 
soul. For his importance is not confined to the battle- 
field. Behind the immediate issue of the war of the 
nations are many issues affecting many lands. Who 
shall say what influences will emerge triumphant in 
this country, in Germany, in Russia, in France? 
Everywhere we see new hopes blossoming — nowhere 
more than in France where the school of Clericalist 
reactionaries, Barres, Bourget, Dimnet, and others, 
are busy anticipating that the war will bring the 
downfall of the Republic, and that with the army 
victorious and under their control they will at last 
have the democracy well in hand. The political 
struggle in France has always centred in the army, 
for the Clericalists know that if they can possess the 
army, as the Kaiser and his Junkers possess it, Parlia- 
ment, like the Reichstag, will cease to be the instru- 
ment of power. It was the exposure of the Dreyfus 
conspiracy that prevented the fall of the Republic 
nearly twenty years ago, but since then the attempts 
to capture the army for the Clerical cause have not 
ceased, and there have not been wanting many signs 
of its success. The restoration of the notorious Colonel 
de Paty du Clam, the anti-Dreyfusard, to office, and 
the revival of military parades in the streets of Paris, 
were not the least significant of these symptoms. 

Through this atmosphere of political intrigue, 
General Joffre has come slowly to the front — a silent, 
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General Joffre 



determined man, given wholly to his profession, 
famous as an engineer and scientist, having seen 
service in the East and in command of the expedition 
to Timbuctoo. Though not a politician, he was known 
as a Republican and a Freemason, and it was not 
until the regime of General Andre at the War Office 
had destroyed the Clericalist patronage in the Army 
that he obtained the epaulettes of a brigadier-general. 
When the Council of War was reorganised in 1911, he 
was made Chief of the General Staff, General Pau, who 
is a well-known Clerical, having first refused the post, 
whether on grounds of age only, or because he would 
not accept the conditions which accompanied the 
office, is not quite clear. But whatever the cause, 
the result was that when the crisis came a Republican 
was in command of the Republican army. 

It is a good omen for France — all the better because 
General Joffre is too good a Republican to allow 
political motives to interfere with his duty to the 
State. The spirit in which he conceives his office, as 
well as the ruthlessness of his hand in dealing with 
incompetence, was revealed soon after his appoint- 
ment as head of the army. France was staggered one 
morning to learn that five generals who had been 
found incompetent in manoeuvres had been dis- 
missed. The fact that all five were known to be 
Republicans naturally suggested that they had fallen 
to a Clericalist conspiracy, and public indignation, 
passing over General Joffre, seized on his Clericalist 
assistant, General de Castelnau, as the culprit. But 
the action was Joffre 's, and his alone. He believed the 
men to be inefficient soldiers, and the fact that they 
were Republicans had nothing to do with the case. 
They must go. 

That is the man. Cautious, self-reliant, indifferent 
to applause, careless of criticism, slow to arrive at a 

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decision, but, the decision once taken, " fighting it 
out on that line " with the grim tenacity of Grant. 
" No weakness will be tolerated." We see the qualities 
of the man all through the campaign — at the begin- 
ing his authority menaced by political intrigues, but 
fighting them down with masterful hand and emerg- 
ing unchallenged autocrat of the army; carrying out 
his scheme of retreat to the Marne with inflexible 
purpose and refusing to allow the very considerable 
victory at Guise to modify his plan; avoiding the 
failures of 1870 b}^ giving the fatal fortresses a wide 
berth; allowing the whole of Northern France to be 
wasted rather than meet the enemy except under his 
own conditions; when the tide had been checked, 
never losing his head or sacrificing his scheme of slow 
attrition to a theatrical move; a man with a long 
vision, a calm mind, and a will of iron — three good 
things in a man of action. 

Few men in history have been subjected to such an 
ordeal as that which came during the unforgettable 
fortnight that followed the retreat from Charleroi. 
Day by day the tide of invasion swept nearer Paris. 
The Meuse and the Sambre were crossed, the line of 
great fortresses along the frontier was engulfed,, wave 
followed wave with seemingly resistless impetus. 
Each bulletin recorded with cold formality some new 
advance. Soon Paris itself heard the guns, and in the 
woods not far to the north of the city patrols of 
Uhlans were to be seen, the first messengers of the 
coming terror. No, not the first, for the aeroplanes 
of the enemy were before them. To appreciate the 
effect of all this, it must be remembered that the 
French public had looked for success, believed in the 
fortresses, knew nothing of strategy. They knew still 
less, if that were possible, of the man who had the 
fate of the country in his keeping. To the Parisians 
no 



General Joffre 



he was little more than a name. They had seen his 
bulky figure, no doubt, cantering in the Bois and 
down the Champs Elysees in company with his two 
step-daughters, but only the initiated had seen in 
him anything more than a superior officer of unknown 
name and rank. Even the initiated might have been 
excused for entertaining fears, for what was there in 
the record of this man to give that popular assurance 
of victory that means so much. There was no fact on 
which to hang a legend, no anecdote that gave a clue 
to character. Born among the mountaineers of 
Roussillon in the Pyrenees, the son — one of eleven 
children — of a cooper of Rivesaltes, he was as remote 
in tradition and temperament from the France of 
Paris as the fisherman of Loch Erribol is from the 
Englishman of Balham or Putney. His native speech 
was not French, but a dialect akin to the Catalan 
speech on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. He had, 
through his gift for mathematics, got his foot on the 
ladder at the Ecole Poly technique, and he had slowly 
climbed the ladder till now, a man of sixty-three, 
he was supreme. But there was not a sensation or a 
dazzling incident in all his career. Only once (for 
though he was in one of the forts during the invest- 
ment of Paris in 1870-71 he saw nothing of the field 
operations) had he been under fire, and that only 
when he led his little column of 400 men (chiefly 
natives) through 500 miles of desert and wilderness 
by the Niger to Timbuctoo and overcame the war- 
like tribes of the Touareg. It was a remarkable 
achievement, as a perusal of his very simple, un- 
affected story of My March to Timbuctoo will show. 
But it was a small apprenticeship for the command of 
millions. Nor was there anything peculiarly attractive 
in his personality to distinguish him. He had no gift 
of words, and no arts of the adventurer. He was said 

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to be lazy, and his entire lack of showy qualities made 
his progress incomprehensible to people who had 
known him, and who, judging from externals, saw 
little in him. It was only those who knew this silent 
enigma intimately and were able to see behind 
appearances who understood his worth — his incom- 
parable common sense, his cool judgment, his essen- 
tially scientific and practical genius, his strength of 
will which would have been a dangerous obstinacy 
had it not been informed by such a spacious under- 
standing of the factors involved and such a decisive 
instinct for the essentials of a situation. 

But Paris knew nothing of this. It only heard 
vague rumours of that great defeat to the east near 
Metz, only saw the French army in the north retreat- 
ing, almost in flight, day by day, only felt the doom 
approaching with frightful swiftness. The faith in 
Joffre, unsustained by knowledge of the man, was 
vanishing. Was he after all only another Bazaine? 
It was a moment when the artist of war would have 
made a dramatic stroke at all costs " to stop the 
rot." In the mood of the public and of the army 
this appearance of overwhelming disaster might be 
instantly fatal to him. And it was in this moment 
that Joffre showed that France had found the man 
she needed. It is said, I do not know with what truth, 
that he was opposed to the earlier strategy of the 
war. Certainly that strategy does not accord with 
all that we know of the cautious temper of the man. 
It had in it an element of recklessness, a subservience 
to political aims, that contrasts strikingly with all 
that has happened since. Being inferior both in 
numbers and equipment the French were in no 
position to take the offensive, yet they took the 
offensive in no fewer than three directions — in 
Alsace against Miilhausen, in Lorraine against Metz, 

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General Joffre 



and against the German centre in Luxemburg, upon 
which 500,000 men were flung. The result was 
disastrous. On August 20th, the French suffered 
a severe defeat near Metz, and on the 22nd, the 
attack on the German centre had collapsed. Mean- 
while Namur fell, and on the Sambre the French and 
British left felt the shock of the German offensive 
through Belgium, and on the 23rd were in full retreat 
from the line Charleroi-Mons. The failure of the 
French centre has been explained with ruthless 
frankness in the official French record of the war. 
It was due to " individual and collective failures, 
imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy, 
divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate 
retreats, premature waste of men, the inadequacy of 
certain troops and the incompetence of their leaders 
in the use of both infantry and artillery." It is a 
terrible indictment, and the failure in generalship led 
to a complete change in the chief commands. But 
can it be doubted that the fundamental mistake was 
in the strategy which squandered an inferior force 
on a series of daring offensive movements ? It is hard 
to believe that the cautious Joffre was the author of 
that scheme. It has much more the stamp of political 
expediency than of that calculating prudence that 
is the characteristic of the commander-in-chief. 

But whatever the truth about this, the authentic 
Joffre emerged with the great retreat. That revealed 
a man with the rare courage to do an unpopular thing 
in circumstances of unprecedented trial, and to do 
it unflinchingly. The brilliant thing had failed, 
whether it was his own or another's : now he needed 
the higher courage to do the thing that looked to 
waiting Paris like complete disaster, and to do it 
thoroughly. Step by step he gave France up to be 
ravaged and desolated; night by night he issued his 

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bulletin that told the truth to the anxious citizens 
— told it without one word to qualify its terrible 
import. Then, on the position he had prepared on 
the Marne, with his hidden reserve at hand, with the 
enemy's communications dangerously extended, with 
his own line resting on Paris and Verdun, he called 
the halt and issued the most momentous order in the 
history of war. And from that day the cause of the 
Allies never looked back. The strategy that wrought 
the change was not original. The lessons of 1870 had 
been learned, and the doctrine of the retreat had 
been much discussed. But the discussion of that 
doctrine was one thing: the capacity to carry it into 
effect with steady disregard of all the sentiment 
to the contrary and amidst all the agitations of that 
terrible time was the achievement of a man of rare 
genius, but still more rare character. It discovered 
Joffre to France, and gave it that confidence in his 
generalship that has never since been questioned. 

Fortunate for France that, the most celebrated 
French soldier since Napoleon, he is free alike from 
Napoleonism and Clericalism. For when the war is 
over he will be the supreme figure in the Republic. 
He will have something of the power that General 
Monk had when the sceptre of the great Protector 
had fallen to the nerveless hand of Richard Cromwell 
and the State was subservient to the Army and the 
Army to its chief. It will be the moment for a coup 
d'etat, and in that moment France will have reason 
to be grateful that in her supreme necessity her fate 
was in the hands not only of a great soldier, but of a 
faithful citizen. For the dream of this plain son of 
the mountains, with the frank and kindly smile and 
transparent blue eyes, is not of political power, but 
of loyal service to the Republic, followed by the 
repose of " the peaceful shepherd." He has himself 
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General Joffre 



confided to M. Arthur Hue, his friend since boyhood, 
what his dream is like. A lover of the country, he 
looks forward to the possession of a small vessel 
which would carry a crew of two, his wife, and a 
couple of friends. On this they would spend the fine 
weather navigating the rivers with no end in view 
but the enjoyment of the beauty of the scenery, the 
seduction of the sky, the freshness of the nights. It 
is the dream of a wise man and a healthy mind. May 
it soon be realised. 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 
AND THE SPIRIT OF SERBIA 

I. THE BACK DOOR TO BERLIN 

It is not only to the battlefield that we have to look 
for the true signs of the progress of the war. The 
straws that show how the wind blows come from the 
streets and the Chancelleries as well as from the 
trenches. The riots in Budapest were as significant 
an event as the victory of the Falkland Islands, and 
the retirement of Count Berchtold from the Foreign 
Secretaryship at Vienna throws a more illuminating 
searchlight on the whole field of the war than all the 
flounderings of Hindenburg in the mud of Poland. 
Both the riots and the retirement convey the same 
lesson. " Keep your eye on Hungary " is a sound 
axiom of the war. There is the breach in the German 
fortress. The shortest way to Berlin is the longest. 
It is not by the front door of the Rhine, but by the 
back door of the Danube, for that door is very 
vulnerable. It might open at a knock. It might 
open without a knock. 

The reasons are worth considering. There was prob- 
ably never a war in which the issues were so various 
and so complicated — in which there were so many 
wheels within wheels. If young Peterkin went through 
Europe asking the question which old Kaspar found 
so difficult to answer — " What did they kill each 
other for? " — he would be bewildered by the variety 
of the explanations offered. " To defend the 
neutrality of Belgium and the sanctity of treaties " 
the Englishman would say. " To preserve our in- 
116 



The Emperor Francis Joseph 

dependence " would be the Belgian answer. " To 
release the Serbian race from the Austrian yoke " 
says the Serbian. " To resist aggression and re- 
cover the lost provinces " the Frenchman would 
answer. " To defend our Fatherland from the 
Russian menace and extend the blessings of our 
Kultur " the German would say. " To save the 
Austrian Empire from dissolution " says the Austrian. 
" To protect our little brother, the Serbian Slav " 
says the Russian. " To recover Macedonia " says 
the Turk. " To avenge the wrong done to us twenty 
years ago " says the Japanese. And each answer 
would be one phase of the whole truth. But if young 
Peterkin carefully collated the answers he would, 
being an intelligent boy, inform his little sister 
Wilhelmine that, apart from the ambitions of Prussia, 
the root of all the killing was this: Was Russia or 
Germany, Slav or Teuton, to be master of Con- 
stantinople and the warden of the Balkans? And 
as a secondary cause he would put the preservation 
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

That Empire has had more hard things said about 
it than any save that of the Turk, and it has deserved 
them more. Gladstone declared truly that no one 
could put his finger anywhere and say, " Here Austria 
did well," and Bismarck likened the Austrian Empire 
to a ramshackle house built with bad bricks and only 
held together by the German cement. It was said long 
ago that if Austria did not exist it would have to be 
invented. The truth is that it has the appearance of 
an " invention " — a thing that has been pieced 
together out of disparate material rather than of a 
thing that has grown out of the soil. It is the negation 
of nationality. It is as artificial as Mrs. Gamp's curls 
which were so obviously false that they could not be 
said to be a deception. Falstaff said that Squire 

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Shallow was like a man made out of cheeseparings 
after supper. Austria-Hungary is hardly more real 
than that. It is like a moth-eaten structure that 
has long been uninhabitable but has forgotten to 
tumble down. It has been allowed to stand just as 
the Venetian Empire was allowed to stand until 
Napoleon came with his whiff of grapeshot and 
reality and crumbled it to dust. For a generation 
the prophets have prophesied disaster, and always 
the time of disaster was the same. When Francis 
Joseph dies, then . . . 

But Francis Joseph has refused to die. He is 

" The last leaf upon the tree 
In the Spring" 

and survives every storm that rages and every wind 
that blows. There has been no such reign in history 
as his, for the seventy-two years of Louis XIV. in- 
cluded some sixteen years of adolescence in which 
his sovereignty was nominal, while the sixty-seven 
years of Francis Joseph have been years of actual 
rule. And the reign has been no less remarkable 
for its events than for its duration. He came to the 
throne on the abdication of his uncle in 1848 — in that 
year when the absolutism of Metternich had collapsed 
and the thrones of Europe seemed falling to ruin 
amid almost universal revolution. Within ten years 
he had lost Lombardy to the Italians, and seven 
years later he was rolled in the dust by Bismarck 
and found his country thrust out of the German con- 
federation and the headship of the German family 
transferred to the Prussian. 

But these external disasters are only a part of the 

catastrophic story. Within the empire his reign 

has been red with blood. The best that can be said 

for him in regard to the infamy of his dealing with 

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Francis Joseph, 
Emperor of Austria-Hungary 



The Emperor Francis Joseph 

the Hungarian revolution in 1&49 is that he was 
young — little more than a boy — and that he was 
probably only a tool in the hands of Windischgratz 
and the ferocious Haynau. But no courtly chroni- 
cling will ever wipe out the stain of the murder of 
Louis Batthyany and the Hungarian patriots. 

From that episode sprang those curses which, 
whether real or legendary, have had a terrible fulfil- 
ment. It is said that the Countess Karolyi, whose 
son was among the victims, uttered this mediaeval 
malediction upon the Emperor : 

"May Heaven and Hell blast his happiness! 
May his family be exterminated ! May he be smitten 
in the persons of those he loves! May his life be 
wrecked, and may his children be brought to ruin! " 

And there is another curse attributed to a distin- 
guished woman, who was dragged from her family 
and flogged by Haynau's savages in the market 
place — a curse more precise and more daringly pro- 
phetic, for it declared that his crimes were to be 
avenged by thirteen tragedies, and that within two 
years of the last he was to die. And those who love 
the occult take pleasure in making a list of the 
calamities that have befallen the Emperor and in 
showing that the murder at Serajevo completed the 
tale, and that Francis Joseph's death is due. What- 
ever credence is attached to the curses — and they 
are probably only inventions — there has rarely been 
a career in history more persistently dogged by 
tragedy than that of the Emperor — his niece burned 
to death, his daughter poisoned, his brother Maxi- 
milian shot in Mexico, his sister-in-law insane, his 
cousin Ludwig of Bavaria insane, a murderer and 
a suicide, his only son Rudolph a suicide and a 
murderer, his wife, after attempting suicide by 
drowning, assassinated at Geneva, his sister-in-law 
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burned to death in Paris, his brother exiled following 
a notorious scandal, his nephew and heir assassinated. 
Add to all this the innumerable matrimonial scandals 
and squabbles, the morganatic marriages, the elope- 
ments, the family conflicts, and we have a record of 
personal misery that would be difficult to match in 
any degree of life. And at the end of all, this 
stupendous calamity in the midst of which the 
reign that rose in the red dawn of revolution is 
setting in a sea of blood. 

It would be unjust to Francis Joseph to take the 
punishment as the measure of his offence. On the 
contrary, though he has had notorious private fail- 
ings, he has had considerable public virtues, and it 
is probable that nothing but his personality has 
saved his Empire from the disruption that is inherent 
in its artificial character. Think for a moment of 
the problem of government. Here, to begin with, is 
that impossible anomaly, a Dual Monarchy. And in 
that dual kingdom there is a confusion of races with- 
out parallel — Slavs (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, 
Croats, Serbs, Slovenes) to the number of 21,000,000; 
Germans, 12,000,000; Magyars (Hungarians), 
9,000,000 ; Latins (Italians and Rumanians) , 4,000,000. 
With the confusion of races is the confusion of 
tongues. There are, exclusive of dialects, ten prin- 
cipal languages spoken in the Empire. 

If Francis Joseph has failed to weld this hetero- 
geneous mass into a political whole, the fact need 
cause no surprise — certainly no surprise to English- 
men who have had centuries of experience of the 
attempt to govern Ireland on centralised lines. His 
own tendency has, on the whole, been distinctly 
liberal. After that ruthless repression of the Hun- 
garians, for which he can only be held technically 
responsible, he moved towards an enlightened tolera- 
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The Emperor Francis Joseph 

tion of the national ideal which was new in an empire 
predominantly Catholic and therefore non-national. 
The attitude of Austria, especially in recent years, 
has certainly not been unfavourable to freedom. 

But this movement towards cohesion on autono- 
mous and national lines has been vitiated by the 
second of the great elements in the Dual Monarchy — 
Hungary. Although the Slavs are the most numer- 
ous element in the Dual State, the two most compact 
racial bodies are the Germans and the Hungarians, 
using that word in its racial sense as applying only 
to the Magyars. Now the Magyars are among the 
most able people in Europe. " There is more political 
genius in the little finger of a Magyar than in the 
whole body of a German " said a distinguished 
diplomatist to me long ago, and in saying this he 
expressed what is a commonplace of political society. 
It was the Magyars who first raised the flag of revolt 
against the old tyranny of Austria. They not only 
won their freedom and the independence of Hungary, 
but they won a lasting name as the champions of 
constitutional liberty in Europe. 

Unfortunately, as not infrequently happens, their 
love of liberty was found in practice to be restricted 
to themselves. Liberty was too precious a thing to 
be wasted on Slavs, Latins, and non-Magyars gene- 
rally, and the result has been the complete political 
suppression of the subject races and a condition of 
unrest that is largely the cause of the disruptive 
condition of the Dual Monarchy. And the influence 
of the Magyars has not been limited to Hungary. 
The political genius of the Magyar nobility has made 
them the dominating partner in the Federal govern- 
ment and even in Austrian affairs. 

From all this it follows that the Magyars, with 
their high racial pretensions and feudal scorn of 

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inferior peoples, are not likely to tolerate the idea 
of being hewers of wood and drawers of water for 
Berlin. The Magyars neither love the Germans 
emotionally nor respect them intellectually. So far 
as this is a war for keeping the non-Magyar elements 
under control, it is a war of which they approve and 
which their policy has promoted. But so far as this 
is a war for the aggrandisement of Germany it is a 
war in which the Magyars have no enthusiasm, and 
the disposition of Berlin to regard Austria-Hungary 
merely as its obedient underling has already led to 
serious friction. There is nothing more certain than 
that Hungary will not sacrifice itself to save Prussia, 
and that the moment it sees its interests imperilled 
by association with Germany it will act in its own 
interests. 

And there is a particular as well as a general reason 
for its concern at the tendencies of the war. The 
possibility of the intervention of Rumania has been 
present throughout the struggle. At the beginning 
the German sympathies of King Carol were a restrain- 
ing influence, and he made a strong pro-German de- 
liverance in which he laid emphasis on the fact that the 
true interest of his country lay in the recovery of 
Bessarabia which was annexed by Russia under the 
Berlin Treaty. Since his death, however, the popular 
sympathies of the people with the Allies have been 
manifest, and the advent of Italy into the struggle 
hss revived the movement in favour of war in 
Rumania, whose relations with Italy are racially 
and politically intimate. The movement is dictated 
by one main motive — the future of Transylvania. 
That portion of Hungary is overwhelmingly Rumanian 
in population, and it has long been fermenting with 
unrest under the repressive rule of the Magyars. 
To paint Rumania as a chivalrous deliverer would be 
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The Emperor Francis Joseph 

an imaginative flight. A country which has a higher 
proportion of illiterates than Russia cannot be sus- 
pected of any love of democracy. But there can be 
no doubt that the advent of a Rumanian army into 
Rumanian Hungary would raise the population en 
masse, and it is this shadow in the south that is 
darkening the thought of the Magyars. They see 
the dismemberment of their kingdom approaching. 
They see themselves being sacrificed to keep Prussian 
territory free from the invader. Their pride and 
their interest alike are challenged, and they are not 
the people to sit idle under any challenge. They are 
the intellectual masters of the Empire and hold the 
old Emperor in the hollow of their hands. Berlin 
must look to its back door. 



II. THE ROOT OF THE WAR 

War is a great schoolmaster. It was said by John 
Bright that its only virtue was that it taught people 
geography. The partial truth of that saying is 
realised to-day in an unexampled manner. We all 
know the map of Europe as few of us ever knew it 
before. We could find our way almost blindfold 
over the Vosges Mountains and through the Ardennes 
to Nieuport. We are more familiar with the marsh- 
lands of East Prussia and the configuration of the 
Gallipoli Peninsula than we are with the Chiltern 
Hills, and we know the passes and summits of the 
Carpathians better than we know the mountains of 
Lakeland. 

But geography is not the only subject in which 
we have had a miraculous illumination. We have 
learned much about the financial basis of society, the 
economic relations of peoples, the meaning of credit, 
the strateg}' of war, the functions of the State, and a 

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hundred other phases of our strange human society. 
We are in a school where we learn with a terrible 
rapidity many things to which we have been in- 
different in the past. We were indifferent because, 
in our happy security, we thought they had no bear- 
ing upon our lives. We find that we were wrong — 
that the roots of our individual life have vast rami- 
fications, that a blow struck in some remote corner 
of the globe may bring all our happiness to ruin. As 
I write in a tiny hamlet in Buckinghamshire, I look 
across to a little cottage and see a woman bending at 
work in the garden. Last July she had three sons. 
To-day two of them lie in unknown graves in Flanders. 
The third is wounded and in hospital. I dare say she 
did not so much as hear of the Serajevo tragedy. 
Yet that tragedy lighted a train of events that has 
wrecked her life as it has wrecked the lives of millions 
all over the face of Europe. And if there is one 
lesson of the war more imperative than others, it is 
the lesson that the democracy can no longer live in 
the old careless ignorance of the events on which its 
existence ultimately depends. 

How indifferent we were on that day when we 
heard the news of the assassination of the Archduke 
Ferdinand and his wife! To most of us it was only 
the latest episode in the tragic story of the Habsburgs 
and a new sorrow for the sorrow-laden Francis Joseph. 
If we thought of its political meaning at all, we saw 
in it merely an incident in that interminable quarrel 
between Austria- Hungary and Serbia, a quarrel which 
had usually taken the serio-comic form of the " Pig 
War," Austria shutting out the Serbian pigs and 
leaving its neighbour without a market for its prin- 
cipal article of trade. Our sympathies were not 
engaged on either side. Austria made no appeal to 
any sentiment, and the reputation of Serbia had 
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The Emperor Francis Joseph 

been too much stained with political assassination 
to command respect. 

And yet there was no people in Europe more 
entitled to the sympathy and respect of the world 
than this nation of peasants who had fought so 
heroically for their national existence. Nor is there 
any people, not even the Poles, who furnish so con- 
vincing a witness that the principle of nationality 
can never be outraged without the penalty being 
exacted in full. The State may be destroyed, but 
the nation is never destroyed. If it were possible to 
destroy a nation, the Armenians would have long 
since, perished under the centuries of torture that 
they have suffered, and the Serbs would have been 
absorbed long ago in the culture of their tyrants. 
It is more than five centuries since the Serbian people 
fell before the Turk on the field of Kossovo. They 
had touched greatness under their Tsar, Stephen 
Dushan, had been supreme in the Balkan Peninsula, 
and had developed laws and commerce and even the 
arts. But the triumph of the Turk left them shattered 
in fragments. Only that portion which took refuge 
in the little mountain land of Montenegro preserved 
its freedom. Bosnia, in self-defence, adopted the 
faith of Islam. The fragment known as Serbia was 
ground under the heel of a ruthless tyranny, its 
nobility obliterated, its people enslaved. More than 
four centuries passed. The Montenegrins, entrenched 
in their mountains, still kept the flag of the race 
flying, their life a perpetual war against the en- 
veloping Turk. But the dawn was breaking. The 
strength had gone out of the Turkish Samson, and 
first among the Balkan peoples to throw off his yoke 
were the Serbians. They won their freedom in 1804 
by their own unaided courage. The war of liberation 
in Greece a few years later touched the imagination 

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of the world and brought to the cause of emancipa- 
tion the enthusiasm of the West and the passion of 
the poets. And when, half a century later, the 
Bulgarians drove the enemy out of their land it was 
with the powerful aid of Russia and the passionate 
support of the British democracy. But Serbia 
fought its battle without any applause, and sounded 
alone the doom of the Turk in Europe. 

But when the menace of the Turk was rolled south- 
wards new clouds began to gather on the Serbian 
horizon. They came from the north and took 
definite shape in 1875. In that year there was a 
rising amongst the Serbians of Bosnia against the 
rule of the Sick Man. He had now few possessions 
left in the Balkans. He had been thrust out of 
Serbia, Greece, and Rumania. He was going from 
Bulgaria, and the impulse of liberty had at last 
roused the Bosnians to action. Their kindred in 
Serbia and Montenegro answered cheerfully the 
familiar call to war against the historic foe, and their 
victory seemed assured and the freedom of Bosnia 
accomplished. But at this moment Austria- Hungary 
intervened and at the subsequent Berlin Congress 
robbed Serbia of the fruits of her sacrifice. Bosnia 
was left nominally under the Turk — actually in the 
possession of Austria. It was one of the many evil 
seeds sown at the Berlin Congress, and it is a 
humiliation for this country to remember that it was 
sown with the sanction and support of Disraeli. It 
was he more than any one else who was responsible 
for the two main blots on the Berlin Treaty — the 
handing back of Macedonia to the Turk and the 
maintenance of the Turk in Bosnia with the reversion 
to Austria. Bismarck, watching Disraeli's hand, 
secretly rejoiced. " The Jew will do the job for us," 
he had said to Austria, and now it was being done. 
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The Emperor Francis Joseph 

Those of us who recall the theatrical " peace with 
honour " speech can to-day measure the calamity 
which that vain boast foreshadowed. The Berlin 
Treaty was Disraeli's single great achievement, and 
no greater wrong was ever done to the cause of peace 
and no greater outrage to honour. 

From that wrong — with its denial of the claims of 
nationality, its repudiations of the small nations, 
its concessions to Austria, and its rehabilitation of 
the Turk — came our woes. Serbia, denied that re- 
union with her Bosnian kindred which her heroism 
had won, was left to struggle against the new foe, 
whose way to Salonica she barred and whose jealousy 
of her growth was exhibited in every form of irrita- 
tion and intrigue. It was Austria who was always 
the evil genius of the peasant people. It was she 
who led the corrupt King Milan to engage in the first 
war with Bulgaria in 1885, and it was her malign in- 
fluence which was largely responsible for the second 
Balkan war in 1912. She had shut out the Serbians 
from access to the sea through Albania, and the 
Serbians turned for their reward to Macedonia and 
so came in conflict with Bulgaria, which was precisely 
the object which Austria aimed at. In the mean- 
time, in 1909, Austria had frankly annexed Bosnia. 
It was a flagrant breach of the Berlin Treaty and a 
calculated challenge to Russia to contest Austrian 
supremacy in the Balkans. Isvolsky accepted the 
challenge and encouraged Serbia and Montenegro to 
resist this final separation from their fellow Serbs. 
But at the critical moment the full meaning of the 
conspiracy was made apparent. The Kaiser's " shin- 
ing armour " glittered in the field, and Russia, de- 
clining the new challenge, left Serbia and Montenegro 
to make their apologies and retire defeated. It was 
a great victory for Austria and a greater for Germany. 

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Russia had been driven out of the field and the 
Serbian dreams seemed finally destroyed. 

But this was only the beginning. It disclosed the 
larger aims which were now to be rapidly accom- 
plished. Through Austria, Germany would advance 
over the body of Serbia to the iEgean and so estab- 
lish her " through connection " with Asia Minor and 
those Oriental glories that have been the dream of 
the Kaiser as they were the dream of Napoleon. The 
Turk was already " squared," and with Russia 
quiescent the path was clear and only the suitable 
occasion for taking it was awaited. But in 1912 
there came a grave check to the plot. The Balkan 
Federation was born and Bulgar, Greek, and Serbian 
joined forces to drive the Turk from the Balkans. 
Their triumph was swift and startling ; but not more 
swift and startling than the collapse. In that tragedy 
there were many villains ; but the victor was Austria 
and through Austria Germany. The powerful 
Federation that had suddenly sprung up to bar the 
way to the JEgean was dissolved, and in its place there 
were only a group of angry and broken little states, 
ready at a word to fly again at each other's throats. 
The path was miraculously cleared once more, and 
the moment approached to strike. We know from 
the revelations of Signor Giolitti that the ultimatum 
to Serbia was contemplated in 1913, but for some 
reason it was delayed. Perhaps a plausible excuse 
was awaited. 

It came with the Serajevo tragedy. The truth 
about that mysterious episode will one day be un- 
ravelled. It has been suggested that the assassins 
were tools of the Hungarian enemies of the Archduke, 
and the suggestion cannot be wholly dismissed, for 
the facts leave much to be explained. That the 
Archduke was extremely unpopular with the re- 
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The Emperor Francis Joseph 

actionaries of the Dual Monarchy was notorious. 
He was married to a Slav, was known to have Slav 
sympathies and to contemplate, when he came to the 
throne, a large extension of liberty to the Slav peoples 
who were so ruthlessly repressed by the Magyar 
autocracy. The circumstances of his visit to Sera- 
jevo were singularly suspicious, and the lack of 
proper protection was much remarked on. Nor can 
we leave out of account the singularly small respect 
which was shown at his funeral and the refusal of 
the Emperor to allow his dead wife to share her 
husband's grave. 

But whatever may be the finding of history on 
this obscure subject, certain facts are clear. With 
the death of the Archduke two things were accom- 
plished which served the purpose of the conspirators 
at Vienna and Budapest in an almost miraculous 
fashion. The most formidable enemy of the re- 
actionaries, the man whose Slav sympathies they 
most feared, was out of the way, and, equally im- 
portant, an excuse of the most respectable kind had 
presented itself for finally clearing Serbia from 
Austria's path to the South. If the ultimatum of 
1913 was delayed because of the lack of an adequate 
peg on which to hang it, there was no longer any 
reason for hesitation. 

The secrecy with which the bolt was forged is 
familiar history. For more than three weeks there 
was no apparent movement. The ambassadors at 
Vienna were, except no doubt for the sense of mystery 
and disquiet which the atmosphere of conspiracy com- 
municates, as ignorant of what was happening as the 
English people in the midst of their domestic quarrel. 
It was not until July 21 that Sir Edward Grey sent 
that simple inquiry which opens the White Paper. 
The contrast of that quiet, almost casual, little note 

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with the swift and tremendous drama that unrolls 
itself in the following pages is unlike anything else to 
be found in books. It is as though with a careless 
remark about the weather we stumble upon the Day 
of Judgment. It was not until the ultimatum to 
Serbia appeared that the world generally realised 
that anything serious was afoot. Its terms left no 
room for escape, except by way of abject surrender, 
and the time-limit of forty-eight hours deliberately 
excluded any possibility of peaceful negotiation. It 
was the " Hands up " of the highwayman. 

No doubt it was hoped that the coup of 1909 
would be repeated and that Russia would leave Serbia 
to its fate. There was ground for this view in the 
fact that M. Sazonoff, the Russian Foreign Minister, 
unlike M. Isvolsky, who held the office in 1909, was 
anxious for peace and had negotiated the Potsdam 
agreement that followed the Bosnian episode. But 
the situation was now fundamentally different. 
Then it was only the ambitions of Serbia which were 
at stake : now it was its existence, and not only that 
but the whole future of the Balkans. There is 
evidence that at the last moment, when they realised 
that the challenge would be taken up, Count Tizsa 
and his fellow-conspirators were anxious to draw 
back. But if Vienna had been " bluffing," Berlin 
had not, and it was Berlin who was master. Its 
terms were a complete diplomatic victory as in 1909 
or war, and the Hungarian plotters were caught in 
the net of their own fashioning. They had ex- 
ploited the " shining armour " to win a bloodless 
victory and found themselves the tools of Germany's 
larger ambitions. And so in the end the wrongs of 
Serbia set Europe in flames, and the "peace with 
honour " of the Berlin Congress issued in universal 
war. It is the nemesis of nationalism. 
130 







The Grand Duke Nicholas 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 

AND THE TRAGEDY OF POLAND 

I 

It seems a long time since the newspapers talked 
so confidently about the " steam roller," and since 
Mr. Belloc used to correct their optimism by express- 
ing doubts as to whether the invasion of Silesia would 
be really effectively begun before the end of October 
last. In the interval we have learned much about 
the magnitude of the task, the meaning of strategic 
railways and the military power of Germany. Silesia 
is still far off, and we are rejoicing to-day that the 
latest of those headlong lunges at Warsaw has been 
checked. Four times the tidal wave has thundered 
over Poland, from the extreme south to the extreme 
north, and has seemed about to submerge the capital, 
and four times it has been dammed within sound, 
almost within sight of the city. We see now that the 
capture of Warsaw was the supreme winter task of 
Germany. After the failure at Ypres she concen- 
trated all her power for a decisive blow in the East 
that would leave her free in the spring to meet the 
mighty storm which she knew was gathering in the 
West and would break in the spring or early summer. 
The decisive blow has failed. Russia, we see now, 
was not a steam roller; but a dam. The dam has held 
and Hindenburg has lost. We can see the Kaiser 
turning his eyes from the East to the W T est. He knows 
at last that he has ceased to rule the storm. Germany 
is no longer the tidal wave, but in her turn is the 
dam against which the waters are thundering. 

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If the expectations in regard to Russia nine months 
ago were extravagant, the conclusion of the winter 
campaign leaves her military prestige high and her 
potentialities undiminished. Her success may be 
attributed to the lessons of the disaster that befell 
her in Manchuria ten years ago, and largely to the 
personal influence of the Grand Duke Nicholas. 
There has probably never been a more infamous 
story of corruption than that associated with the 
Russo-Japanese War. It permeated the whole army 
and navy from the grand dukes downwards, and in 
the course of one of the many trials that followed the 
war, the head of the firm of Tille, the army con- 
tractors, admitted that in the course of twenty-five 
years they had paid £2,000,000 in bribes. 

The revelations achieved something, but they did 
not cleanse the stables. They still left the army and 
navy the prey of the exploiter, and the Government 
incurably inefficient and unteachable. Only a few 
weeks before the war, when the military budget was 
introduced into the Duma, it was stated that there 
were 2000 generals in the Russian Army, against 
350 in the French Army, and that of these the vast 
majority had received their rank not for military 
merit but through patronage or personal service. 
Of the younger generals only 25 per cent, had passed 
through the regimental mill. And out of 300 colonels 
of most recent promotion, only one had gone through 
a military academy. The official attitude towards 
corruption may be illustrated by the case of General 
Reinbot, who before the Russo-Japanese War was the 
Prefect of Moscow, practically the Viceroy of the 
Tsar. He was convicted of corruption in connection 
with the army and sentenced to a long term of 
imprisonment. This was reduced to a year in a 
fortress, followed soon afterwards by a free pardon. 
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The Grand Duke Nicholas 

When the invasion of East Prussia took place, General 
Reinbot was appointed governor. 

It was not without reason, therefore, that the 
Grand Duke, addressing his commissariat staff at the 
beginning of the war, is reported to have concluded 
his instructions in these terms: " Gentlemen, no 
stealing." And probably if anybody could induce an 
army contractor to be honest, it would be the Grand 
Duke Nicholas. For he is not only the most influential 
man about the Court, but he is the most popular 
figure in Russia. His mere height and the dignity 
of his carriage would alone command respect, and 
his manner is at once modest and authoritative. His 
temperament is that of the mystic, and he is reputed 
to be the source of the strange influence which the 
Phillippes, Meshkertskys, and Rasputins have 
exercised over the mind of the Tsar and the politics 
of Russia. 

But if he is obscurantist in temperament, he is a 
very practical man in affairs. He has taken his career 
as a soldier seriously ever since as a youth of twenty- 
one he fought in the Russo-Turkish War, and if he is 
not a great strategist himself he has the wisdom to 
rely upon the men who are wise. Nothing is more 
significant in the generalship of the Russian army 
to-day than the entire disappearance of the figures 
who were prominent in the Russo-Japanese War. 
We have to thank the Boer War for at least one thing. 
It showed us our general of genius. It gave us Sir 
John French. If the Russo-Japanese War did not 
teach Russia on whom to rely, it at least taught her 
whom to avoid. The only man who played a con- 
spicuous part in that campaign, and who reappeared 
in high command in the present war, was General 
Rennenkampf . He came from Manchuria with almost 
the only reputation that survived that disaster. 

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The War Lords 

Like Sir John French's, it was the reputation of a 
brilliant cavalry leader. But unlike Sir John French's 
it has not survived the severer test. His failure to 
arrive when Mackensen's army was nearly enveloped 
near Lodz was as fatal as Grouchy's non-arrival on the 
field of Waterloo, and it has led to his supersession. 

The service that the Grand Duke Nicholas has 
done to Russia to-day is that he has cleared the path 
for the men of brains, and has not disdained to go to 
Germany for his lessons. General Yanushkevitch, 
the Chief of the General Staff, is the Moltke of the 
campaign, and he received his military education in 
Germany, where the press is never weary of reproach- 
ing him with " ingratitude." Very German, too, in 
his learned and professional equipment is General 
Ruzsky, the strategist, who, with General Ivanoff, 
the Chief of the Organising Staff, completes the 
intellectual trinity of the Russian Army. 

The action of the Tsar in abolishing the sale of 
vodka has also been attributed to the influence of 
the Grand Duke. In a sense this no doubt is true. 
No incident of the war has produced a more profound 
impression on the mind of the world; but the revolu- 
tion has come about as a military necessity rather 
than as a social reform. From the latter point of 
view it had been demanded for years. The Zemstvos 
and village communities had implored the Govern- 
ment to save the nation from the ravages of drink. 
The very victims themselves joined in the appeal, and 
Count Witte at last took a step towards the revolution 
when he made the distribution of vodka a Govern- 
ment monopoly, destroying the whole vested interest 
of the trade at a blow. But the next step seemed 
impossible. From the monopoly the Government 
drew a revenue of nearly a hundred millions sterling 
a year. The solvency of the State seemed to rest on 
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The Grand Duke Nicholas 

an industry which was destroying the very soul of 
the nation. It was a hard alternative that confronted 
the Government, but the war made the course clear. 
The Grand Duke remembered the mobilisation during 
the Balkan crisis. It had always been said that when 
war came the ravages of vodka would be worth a 
week's start to Germany. During the mobilisation in 
1912 the saying was found to be well within the 
truth. Russia collapsed into intoxication. The men 
came, as it were, out of a debauch reeling, stupefied, 
their pockets bulging with vodka bottles. At the 
depots, as the men staggered in with their bulging 
pockets, the vodka bottles were taken from them, 
and there arose " a mountain of broken glass in a sea 
of whiskey/' 

That experience must not be repeated. Like a 
bolt from the blue came the decree that delivered the 
nation from the tyranny of drink. What years of 
agitation had failed to accomplish, the war effected 
in a day. Revenue or no revenue, the nation must be 
saved. Vodka must go. The Grand Duke spoke, and 
the miracle was done. It has led to another miracle ; 
the industrial productivity of the people has increased 
from 30 to 50 per cent. The war apart, Russia has 
found that its sacrifices have enriched it beyond all 
calculation. 

But when the strain and excitement of the war is 
over, something else will be necessary. If you do not 
have vodka you must have liberty, education, hope, 
ambition. For vodka is not so much a cause as a 
consequence, and it was a wise man who said that 
drink was the shortest cut out of Ancoats. Vodka has 
been abolished as a military necessity; but its place 
will have to be taken by the new and more wholesome 
interests that are denied to a people 75 per cent, of 
whom are illiterate. 

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The War Lords 

It is when we touch the political rather than the 
military aspect of the Grand Duke that we are less 
certain of his influence. It was he who issued the 
famous promise of liberty to Poland ; but that 
promise, again, was a military necessity and events 
have not strengthened the hopes which it awakened. 
The statements of Prince Dolgourokoff made in 
the most influential paper in Moscow as to the 
treatment of the Jews indicate no change in the 
heart of governing Russia, and the new scheme 
that has been announced for the suppression of 
the last rags of freedom left to Finland consorts 
ill with the idea of a war that is being waged 
for the protection of small nationalities. Nor is 
the experience of Galicia promising. We have com- 
mented, justly, on the attitude of the Pope towards 
Cardinal Mercier's great indictment of Germany; 
but it is fair to the Pope to remember that the 
Cardinal Archbishop of Lemberg has been deported 
to Russia, and that Bishop Jurek, the head of the 
Theological College of the Uniate Church, has been 
sent to Tomsk, in Siberia. Bourtseff, who exposed 
the agent provocateur Azeff, and who returned to Russia 
under the general, if vague, promise that a new day 
had dawned, is in prison ; and as an example of the 
attitude towards liberty, I may mention that every 
publication printed in the Ukranian tongue in Russia 
has been suppressed on the ground that the Govern- 
ment, on the strength of the official philologists of 
Russia, do not recognise the existence of such a 
language. I fancy Wales would not rush very enthu- 
siastically to the recruiting office if Mr. Pease issued 
a ukase announcing that its native language was not 
recognised, and the War Office promptly suppressed 
every paper printed in its characters. 

In his sympathies the Grand Duke Nicholas is Pan- 
136 



The Grand Duke Nicholas 

Slavist, a fact in some measure due to his marriage 
with a daughter of King Nicholas of Montenegro, 
another of whose daughters is married to the Grand 
Duke's brother Peter. To that extent, it may be 
said that, unlike M. Sazonoff, he was of those who 
regarded a conflict with Pan-Germanism as inevitable. 
It was a great blow to the Pan-Slavist cause when 
M. Isvolsky was superseded by M. Sazonoff, whose 
disposition was notoriously for peace, and whose 
advent to office in 1909 was followed by the Potsdam 
agreement and the withdrawal of two army corps 
from the German frontier. But the web woven in the 
Balkans, largely by M. Hartwig, the Russian Minister 
at Belgrade, changed the current despite him. 
Indeed, it will be found when all the skein of intrigue 
that preceded the war is unravelled how much the 
catastrophe was due to obscure diplomatists, like the 
Pan-Slav Hartwig, and the equally mischievous Pan- 
German von Tschirschky, who as Ambassador at 
Vienna played so large a part in the final diplomatic 
stages of the tragedy. 

II 
1815-1915 

It is by the fulfilment of the pledge to Poland that 
history will judge the Grand Duke and the Tsar in 
whose name he spoke. The proclamation he issued 
on August 14 is one of the most memorable documents 
in history, not merely for the magnitude of its theme, 
but for the splendour of its rhetoric. 

"Poles! 

" The hour has struck in which the sacred dream 
of your fathers and forefathers may find fulfilment. 
" A century and a half ago, the living flesh of 
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The War Lords 

Poland was torn asunder, but her soul did not die. 
She lived in hope that there would come an hour for 
the resurrection of the Polish nation and for sisterly 
reconciliation with Russia. 

"The Russian Army now brings you the joyful 
tidings of this reconciliation. May the boundaries be 
annulled which cut the Polish nation to pieces ! May 
that nation re-unite into one body under the sceptre 
of the Russian Emperor. Under this sceptre Poland 
shall be re-born, free in faith, in language, in self- 
government. 

"One thing only Russia expects of you: equal 
consideration for the rights of those nationalities 
to which history has linked you. 

" With open heart, with hand fraternally out- 
stretched, Russia steps forward to meet you. She 
believes that the Sword has not rusted which, at 
Griinwald, struck down the enemy. From the shores 
of the Pacific to the North Seas, the Russian armies 
are on the march. The dawn of a new life is breaking 
for you. 

"May there shine, resplendent above that dawn, 
the sign of the Cross, symbol of the Passion and 
Resurrection of Nations ! 

"(Signed) Commander-in-Chief General Adjutant, 

" Nicholas." 

" i (14) August 1914." 

There is no more striking episode of the war than 
this swift and triumphant emergence of the Polish 
question from the general ruin. It has been truly 
said that you may destroy a State, but that you can- 
not destroy a nation. Like the camomile, to use 
Falstaff's image, the more it is trodden on the better 
it grows. It may die of decay, but it only thrives on 
oppression. Of this truth the supreme witness is the 



The Grand Duke Nicholas 

story of the Polish nation which is the most sustained 
tragedy in the history of modern Europe. Long 
before Russia or Prussia or Austria had formed 
themselves, Poland was the great power of Eastern 
Europe, extending at one period from the shores 
of the Baltic to the shores of the Black Sea. Its 
disintegration was due mainly to its failure as the 
centuries went on to meet the new conditions that 
enveloped it. On every side the great autocracies — 
the Hohenzollerns in Prussia, the Romanoffs in 
Russia, the Habsburgs in Austria — were consolidat- 
ing and centralising their powers, while Poland was 
the prey of aristocratic privileges. The ideal of the 
State was sacrificed to class liberties, and the fact 
that the Kingship was elective contributed to the 
spirit of disunity. There was no focus for the nation. 
Encompassed on all sides by aggressive powers 
centralised in personal and hereditary monarchies, 
the doom of Poland was long foreseen. Frederick 
the Great was the chief architect of the first partition ; 
Catherine II. of Russia was the author of the second. 
Maria Theresa shared in the plunder, but unwillingly, 
for she had a soul and, moreover, she had no wish 
to see Russia advancing to her own borders. There 
came a ray of hope when Napoleon was master of 
Europe and its dynasties, and the Poles flocked to 
his standard ; but the hope was swallowed up in the am- 
bitions of the great adventurer. With his eclipse there 
was one more fleeting promise of resurrection, and it 
is of good omen that it came from Russia, from that 
Alexander I. whose character and rule are one of the 
few bright spots in the tragic story of the Romanoffs. 
Why did that promise fail? If we understand that 
we shall have a sure guide to the task of the future. 

At this time exactly a hundred years ago there 
was sitting at Vienna a Congress of the great kings 

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The War Lords 

and their representatives. Europe, after nearly 
twenty years of war and disruption, was at peace. 
Napoleon had fallen, and his dream of a world empire 
had shrunk to the dimensions of the tiny island of 
Elba. And now, the Ogre, as they believed, securely 
caged, the kings and the diplomatists were assembled 
to rebuild the structure of Europe and, if possible, 
to ingerminate perpetual peace. Yes, even at the 
risk of inflaming the martial soul of The Spectator, 
it must be said that it is indubitably true that this 
monstrous idea prevailed. It was even put forward 
by Lord Castlereagh, who represented England at 
the Congress — so low, Mr. Strachey, had the warlike 
spirit of this great country fallen. 

Now we all know that the Congress of Vienna did 
not usher in the reign of perpetual peace. I do not 
here refer to the interlude of the Hundred Days that 
ended with Waterloo. That was only an aftermath of 
Napoleonism, and did not affect the decrees of Vienna. 
There was, it is true, a long period of calm after 
Waterloo, but it was the calm of exhaustion — not 
the calm of a just settlement. The true offspring of 
the Congress of Vienna was not the peace that pre- 
vailed for thirty years, but the wars that, beginning 
with the great upheaval of 1848, have culminated in 
the universal catastrophe of to-day. 

Why did the Congress of Vienna, which did really 
desire to establish the new Europe on a foundation 
of enduring peace, sow instead the seeds of new 
harvests of death ? The question is a vital one at this 
time. At no distant period, probably within the 
present year — the harvest of Krupp and Armstrong 
and Schneider having been reaped — there will be 
another Congress, not at Vienna, but at Stockholm, 
or The Hague, or some other neutral spot. And once 
again we shall see the architects surveying the ruins, 
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The Grand Duke Nicholas 

designing the new structure and aiming, quite 
honestly, to make its proportions so just, its means 
so perfectly suited to its ends that it will never 
collapse again, but stand " four square to all the 
winds that blow." We shall not doubt their good 
intentions. But good intentions are not enough. The 
good intentions of Vienna paved our Hell. Much 
more important than the good intentions of the 
architects will be the ideas from which they work, 
the interests they represent, the sort of cement they 
use to hold the new fabric together. 

And it is here that the lesson of Vienna is fruitful. 
" When I want to know what to do in given circum- 
stances," said a wit to me once, " I try to think what 
my father would have done — and then I do the 
opposite." The Congress of 1915 (if, happily, it be 
1915) will do well to observe a similar attitude of 
distrust in regard to the example of its true author 
and begetter, the Congress of 1815. For if Europe 
repeats now what it did a century ago, then the 
fruit of its labours will not be lasting peace but more 
wars. And that for a very simple reason. The only 
interest that was not represented at the Congress of 
Vienna was the interest of the peoples concerned. 
The soil of Europe from Torres Vedras to Moscow 
was drenched with the blood and strewn with the 
bones of millions of the common people of all lands 
who had been sacrificed in the great game of the 
Dynasts; but when it came to the settlement no 
one gave a thought to the rights or the interests of 
the nationalities. The Kings and their Ministers 
swooped down upon their quarry and fought like 
vultures over a corpse. They wanted peace ; but they 
wanted peace with plunder. 

And in the struggle for plunder the chief motive was 
the aggrandisement of their dynasties. The map of 

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The War Lords 

Europe was redrafted with as little regard for the 
wishes of the people as if they were cattle in the fields. 
The dismemberment of Italy was confirmed by the 
surrender of Lombardy and Venetia to Austria. 
Sweden, robbed of Finland by Russia, was kept quiet 
by the cession of Norway. But it was the treatment 
of Poland which was the supreme blot on the work of 
the Congress, and in that treatment Lord Castlereagh 
was the chief actor. His motive was fear of Russia. 
The Tsar, Alexander, who conducted his own case 
at the Congress, wanted to reunite the fragments of 
Poland under the Crown of Russia and with the con- 
cession of autonomy. To compensate Prussia for the 
loss of her share of Poland he offered to give her 
Saxony, which was not his to give. But there is no 
doubt that his intentions in regard to Poland were 
honest and liberal, for his subsequent action in 
conceding autonomy to that portion of Poland that 
came under Russian control is on record. But 
Castlereagh, dreading the advance of Russia so far 
into the heart of Germany, fought against Polish 
reunion under Russian sovereignty, and, with the 
assistance of Metternich and Talleyrand, defeated 
it, though only after the conflict had become so severe 
as to threaten a new war between the allies. Poland 
was left mutilated under the heel of Austria, Prussia, 
and Russia, and the crime of Frederick the Great 
and Catherine remains to-day. 

From that Congress, in short, nothing but wrong 
came forth, and Castlereagh's scheme for securing 
permanent peace by an agreement to make collective 
war on any Power which attempted to upset the 
settlement came to nothing, not only because at the 
critical moment Napoleon reappeared on the scene, 
but because in such an atmosphere there was no 
possibility of an honourable and disinterested com- 
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The Grand Duke Nicholas 

pact. It is not very profitable to discuss what might 
have happened had nations instead of dynasties been 
the governing factor in the settlement. But it is 
useful to recall the fate that has overtaken these 
ingenious jugglings with the map of Europe. The 
century that has passed has made ashes of most of 
the solemn covenants of Vienna. Italy has thrown 
off the yoke of Austria, Norway is independent, 
Hanover is no longer a possession of Great Britain, 
Belgium is free (or until yesterday was free) , and the 
kingships of Naples and Sardinia have vanished. 
What remains of Vienna is all bad. Finland is still 
enslaved, and Poland dismembered and crushed 
under the triple heel of the Dynasts. Had Castlereagh, 
instead of resisting Alexander's scheme for the 
reunion of Poland, directed all his energies to making 
that scheme a reality, to giving Poland not only 
unity, but liberty, he would have done a splendid 
service to the great principle of nationalism. And 
had he succeeded, Poland would have served as a 
check alike upon the ambitions of Russia and of 
Prussia, and would have contributed to a true 
equilibrium of Europe instead of that artificial 
equilibrium which is the unattainable dream of 
ambitious kings and intriguing diplomatists. 

The way of lasting peace is by the path of demo- 
cracy and not of despotism, and if the Congress of 
1915 (or 1916) is to avoid the calamitous conse- 
quences of that of 1815 it must approach the problems 
it will have to solve from the point of view of national 
interests rather than from that of dynastic ambition 
or diplomatic ingenuity. Kant founded his vision 
of Perpetual Peace on the rock of Republicanism, 
and if he were living to-day he would not alter his 
foundation stone. So long as the world allows the 
Kaisers and the Caesars and the Napoleons to play 

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The War Lords 

with its destinies there will be war. I would have no 
King who wore a uniform or pranced at the head of 
soldiers. The head of a State should be its chief 
citizen, and he should come on to the parade ground 
as the symbol of the civic power. Make him a soldier 
and he will soon subordinate the council chamber to 
the parade ground. Give hkn a uniform, gold 
epaulettes, and a brass helmet, and he will soon begin 
to think of government in the terms of Krupp and 
Armstrong. His diplomacy will be the diplomacy 
not of internal peace but of external conquest. It 
will look abroad rather than at home. He will think 
of his people not as citizens whom he can serve, but 
as soldiers whom he can command, and every art of 
peace, every victory of science, will be diverted to the 
purposes of war. 

In the black coat of the President we have the 
assertion that peace and not war is the goal of human 
society, and that the highest interest of the State 
is the well-being of its people. The day that the 
French President or the United States President 
should put on a uniform to review the army would 
be a day of sackcloth and ashes for all who wish 
well to those countries. Nothing but the necessity 
of wearing civilian clothes (and a limited term of 
office) would keep so perfect an example of the 
Napoleon breed as Mr. Theodore Roosevelt from 
developing dreams of world-empire. Let France, 
after this war, look after its plain-clothes President. 
He will be in imminent peril. 

This is a digression; but it is a digression that is 
pertinent, for the main object here is to urge that 
when the Congress comes it shall be the democracies 
and not the despots who shall inspire its deliberations 
and govern its decisions. The settlement of 1815 
failed because it put back the clock to the eighteenth 
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The Grand Duke Nicholas 

century and treated Europe as a chequer-board for a 
game played by gentlemen with gold crowns and brass 
helmets. If the Congress that we await is not to leave 
behind a heritage of dragons' teeth also, it will have 
to start from the idea of the sovereignty of the 
people — from the idea that nationality is the only 
cement that will hold Europe together and give it 
lasting peace. 

Every other settlement will be artificial and doomed 
to failure. It was the mutilation of France which 
kept the wound of 1870 open. Bismarck knew that 
it would keep it open and, in his letter to his 
wife after the Versailles settlement, admitted that 
Germany had " gained more than I think wise, in 
my personal political calculation." To-day she is 
beginning to understand what fatal folly it is to out- 
rage a nation, and leave it nursing the passion of 
revenge. The Archbishop of Canterbury has wisely 
urged that, in the coming settlement, there should 
be nothing that could keep alive that passion in the 
heart of Europe. Let justice be done and full atone- 
ment made, so far as atonement is possible; but let 
there be no violation of the principle of nationalism 
to leave a legacy of revenge that will poison the 
future. 

The fate of Europe to-day is being settled on the 
battlefield; but this is only the first phase of the 
struggle. To-morrow its fate will be even more 
decisively influenced in the council chamber. The 
battle that will be fought there will be between the 
old ideals and the new, between the conception of 
Europe as the chessboard of dynasts and aristocracies 
and the playground of soldiers, and the conception 
of Europe as the freehold of the common people and 
the hive of its peaceful activities. All the conflicting 
interests of human society are preparing for that 

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struggle and for what will come after it. The Royalists 
and Clericalists of France are full of new and extrava- 
gant hopes, and the Prussian junkers everywhere — 
the people who hate militarism in all countries except 
their own — are looking for new victories over the 
democracy. They are talking not about the evils of 
secret diplomacy, or of despotism, or of militarism; 
not about the limitation of armaments, or the means 
of establishing a peaceful European society organised 
to make war impossible. They are talking about the 
virtues of conscription and the need of more ships; 
about that phantom, the balance of power, and 
(unconscious that they are echoing von Moltke, 
Bernhardi, and the rest) about the high spiritual 
influence of war. " While human nature endures 
there will be war," says The Morning Post with 
unconcealed satisfaction. " There are worse things 
than war," says The Spectator, its eye on democracy. 

It is time that the people were awake too, or they 
will find that the story of 1815 will be repeated to-day, 
and that, at the end of all this frightful carnage, we 
shall have started on a new century of armed peace 
and bloodshed — that, in fact, this world is still " the 
madhouse of the universe." 

Few men will have more influence in moulding 
the future than the Grand Duke Nicholas, for the 
successful conclusion of the war will leave him one 
of the two or three most powerful figures in Europe. 
He has capacity, ambition, the passion of the mystic, 
and the skill of the practised man of affairs. He is, 
as I have said, the most popular man in Russia. 
He is, too, the power behind the throne. The Tsar 
is a man of sincere but shifting emotions, easily 
subject either for good or evil to the influences around 
him. The Grand Duke will be the chief of those 
influences. As the active commander in the first 
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The Grand Duke Nicholas 

successful war that Russia has waged for a century, 
his prestige will be overwhelming. It will be in his 
power to mould a new Russia. It will be in his power, 
too, to stereotype the old Russia. He has shown, in 
the vodka decree and in the manifesto to Poland, that 
he can make great resolves in the interests of war. 
Let us hope that he will show himself equally capable 
of great resolves in the cause of freedom. 

It is not unreasonable to hope that it may be so. 
There is in the strain of the Tsars a curious dualism 
which is absent from the Hohenzollerns. Through 
all the history of the latter house we look in vain for 
one great human impulse. It is an uninterrupted 
story of harsh and personal rule. But through the 
despotism and tyranny of the Tsars there has always 
run a strain of mysticism and humanity which has 
been the spring of fine emotions and large, imagina- 
tive deeds. It was so in the case of Alexander I., 
who was by far the most humane and enlightened 
influence at the Vienna Congress. It is so in the 
case of the present Tsar. He is weak and subject to 
influences, and his career has been a strange record 
of noble impulses and despotic acts. It is difficult 
to reconcile the author of the Hague Tribunal with 
the author of Red Sunday and the decorator of the 
Black Hundreds. But, while he is profoundly 
subject to external suggestion, the Tsar is at the 
bottom a visionary with a sincere though inconstant 
tendency towards the light. As the founder of the 
Hague Tribunal the world will look to him, primarily, 
to make that structure a real defence against a re- 
currence of the shame and horror that have fallen 
upon civilisation. In it we may hope will be cen- 
tralised all the international forces, economic, in- 
dustrial, religious, that make for co-operation. Its 
powers should include the imposition of an economic 

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boycott on any country whose actions are a menace 
to the world's peace, and they should move towards 
the establishment of an international police for the 
preservation of the collective interests from the 
assaults of any brigand power. The Tsar, more than 
any single individual, will have it in his power to give 
the world the lead out of the shambles of the past. 
He can, if he will, be the great Liberator, not of a 
nation but of humanity itself. 



148 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL 

AND THE SPIRIT OF ITALY 

In the collection which will one day be made of the 
great speeches on the war, that of Signor Salandra 
in explanation of Italy's intervention will, for its 
mingled passion and dignity, take a first place. We 
do not want a better illustration of the spiritual 
oppositions behind the struggle than the contrast 
that that speech offers to the clumsy brutality of the 
speech of the German Chancellor to which it was a 
reply. The anger of Germany at the intervention of 
Italy is natural, though a wiser man than Bethmann- 
Hollweg would not have allowed his anger to express 
itself in the silly allegation that Italy has been bought 
by English gold. If he believes that, it is another 
evidence of that myopia which afflicts the German 
mind and makes it so blundering and unintelligible. 
But it is clear he does not believe it, for in the same 
speech he gibes at the King of Italy on the ground 
that he has surrendered to popular passion. There 
he is nearer the truth, for ultimately the action of 
Italy has been the action of the nation, motived 
neither by English gold nor diplomatic intrigue, but 
by a genuine passion for liberty. 

But the anger is excusable, for when the time comes 
to estimate the decisive influences in the struggle, it 
is not improbable that the first place will be given 
to the action of Italy. Had that country thrown in 
its lot with the Central Powers on the outbreak of 
war, the task of the Allies would have been so enor- 

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mously increased that, in the light of our experience 
of the magnitude of that task, we may even doubt 
whether it would not have turned the scale against 
us. The effect on the position of France, on the 
situation in the Mediterranean, on the course of 
events in the Balkans, on the action of Rumania, on 
the possibility of such an adventure as the expedition 
to the Dardanelles, on the economic position of the 
Central Powers, needs no emphasis. Italy was in a very 
real sense the key of the position. The Kaiser knew 
that, and in the great gamble of July it was the mis- 
calculation in regard to Italy that was among his 
most flagrant mistakes. 

There was no excuse for that miscalculation. In all 
the revelations of the war there has been none more 
illuminating than the statement of Signor Giolitti, 
six months ago, to the effect that in August 1913 
the Austrian Foreign Minister told the Italian Am- 
bassador that Austria contemplated sending an 
ultimatum to Serbia, and asked whether in that case 
Italy would support her ally. The reply was in the 
negative, and from that moment Austria and Ger- 
many ceased to treat Italy as an active friend. It is 
significant that there has never been any repudiation 
of the Giolitti disclosure, either in Germany or Austria. 
Why he made it is not very clear, for that extremely 
slim statesman has been, throughout the prolonged 
struggle in Italy, the mainstay of Germany and of 
the policy of neutrality; and his departure from 
Rome was the first absolute proof to the world that 
Prince Billow's mission had failed, and that war was 
imminent. 

But with that negative of August 1913 it should 

have been clear to the Kaiser that, in the absence of 

a swift decision, Italy must be reckoned among his 

enemies. It was not merely that the Triple Alliance 

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King Victor Emmanuel 

had been an empty formality since the Bismarck- 
Crispi days, that the wedge that Bismarck had so 
astutely driven in between Italy and France had 
ceased to operate, and that, on the other hand, the 
historic antagonism between Austria and Italy was 
only intensified by time. More important than all 
this was the instinct for liberty of the Italian people. 
Their resurrection had been the greatest achievement 
of the spirit of freedom in the nineteenth century, and 
the sentiment of the nation, born of that achieve- 
ment, was entirely with the democracies of Western 
Europe. For such a people neutrality could be no 
permanent resting place. As the struggle progressed, 
political interest reinforced the human sympathy, 
and it became clear that the place of Italy among 
the nations was not tenable in the terms of non- 
intervention. She must strike a blow for one side or 
the other or lose her claim to be heard in the counsels 
of Europe. 

It was fortunate that Italy in the hour of its 
momentous decision was not in conflict with the 
predilections of its King. Not the least of the assets 
of Germany in the war has been the extent to which 
the sympathies of peoples with the cause of the Allies 
have been held in check by the sympathies of Kings 
with the cause of the Kaiser. That is very largely the 
explanation of events in the Balkans. But Italy is 
happy in the possession of a King whose temper is as 
liberal as that of his people. He is in many ways the 
most remarkable monarch on a European throne. 
His eminence is not physical, for in that respect he 
is the least of men. He is very little over five feet in 
height, and even under the new minimum standard 
would hardly succeed in passing muster for the 
Kitchener Army. His poverty of inches is the more 
noticeable because his wife, Queen Helen, is one of 

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the tall, athletic daughters of the mountain Prince of 
Montenegro. It is the jest of King Nicholas that his 
daughters are the chief export trade of Montenegro, 
and it is a trade of which the gallant old patriarch- 
King is legitimately proud. Three of his sons-in-law 
are now in command of armies of the Allies, for the 
wife of the Grand Duke Nicholas is, like the Queen of 
Serbia, a daughter of King Nicholas. 

But though Victor Emmanuel is inconspicuous in 
stature he is in character a man of quite unusual 
significance. I do not here refer to his intellectual 
gifts, though they are sufficiently remarkable. They 
have none of the surface brilliancy of those of the 
Kaiser, for he is the least demonstrative of men. 
They have much more the quality of the recluse 
and the student, due no doubt to that weakly child- 
hood through which he was nurtured by Queen 
Margherita with such unwearying devotion. This 
tendency to erudition is evidenced in many directions, 
but primarily in the science of numismatics. This is 
sometimes spoken of as his hobby; but it is much 
more than that, for he not only has the amateur's 
interest in the subject generally, but the expert's 
interest in one phase of it. He is the first living 
authority on the coins of Italy, and his great mono- 
graph on the subject, Corpus Nummorum Itali- 
corum, the first volume of which was published 
some years ago, is among the most important litera- 
ture of the science, while his collection is said to 
contain some 60,000 pieces. To the uninitiated, 
numismatics may seem a blameless but anaemic 
recreation. It is in fact an extraordinarily illuminat- 
ing science that opens the gateway to the romance 
of history and to the understanding of the social and 
economic development of human society. It is this 
access to larger things that gives it its appeal to 
152 



King Victor Emmanuel 

King Victor, whose sympathies and interests are 
singularly wide in range. 

But it is his character even more than his intellec- 
tual equipment that makes the King of Italy the most 
unusual figure among European royalties. He is the 
antithesis of the aggressive personalism of the Kaiser. 
One feels that here is a man who has realised the 
modern conception of Kingship as it has never been 
realised before. There have of course been popular 
Kings in plenty, Kings who cultivated democracy 
and relied for their power upon its sanction and good- 
will. But it may be doubted if there has ever before 
been a King whose convictions were so much engaged 
by the conception of the citizen King. King Albert 
is not less democratic in sympathy and taste, but in 
his case the motive is feeling more than intellectual 
conviction. 

This conception of his office, as well as the strength 
of his character, was revealed in a dramatic manner 
immediately on his accession to the throne by a 
decision of rare courage that shocked the conserva- 
tive elements of society, but had a profound and 
enduring influence for good on the nation. He had, 
up to that time, been practically unknown. His 
modest habit of life, his student taste and his apparent 
indifference to affairs had made him a negligible figure. 
It was his practice, if anyone sought to sound him on 
pohtics, to make a remark on the weather. The con- 
sequence was that he came to the throne an unknown 
quantity. And he came to it in circumstances as 
trying as any young monarch ever had to face. His 
father, King Humbert, had fallen by the hand of an 
Anarchist, and the horror of the crime had evoked a 
cry for stern repressive measures. But the young King 
was adamant. He would not confound democracy 
with the crazy act of an assassin, and resolutely 

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resisted the cry for reprisals. This attitude of mind, 
while it shocked Society, had a remarkable effect 
on the nation. Within a fortnight, said a witness of 
the events of those days, the Italians "had passed 
from the depths of sorrow and shame to a height of 
confidence unknown before to the present generation." 
The sudden revelation of the character of the new 
King had touched the deepest chord in the mind of 
a responsive people. 

Nor was it a passing effect. The plain, uncere- 
monial life of the King and Queen — delighted with 
each other and devoted to their children — did not 
make them popular with " Society," but on the 
nation the character of the King produced a deepen- 
ing sense of trust. His refusal to attack the Socialists 
because of the crime of a mad Anarchist was the 
keynote of all that followed. Within three years of 
his accession he sought, to the scandal of the Con- 
servatives, to introduce the Socialist leader, Signor 
Turati, into the Cabinet, and in 1911 he repeated the 
experiment in the case of the Socialist Signor Bissolati, 
who represents the Quirinal division of Rome and has 
the King for his chief elector. The incident offers a 
significant contrast to the case of Herr Liebknecht, 
who represents Potsdam in the Reichstag, and has his 
chief constituent for his open enemy. Signor Bissolati 
did not enter the Cabinet, offering as his excuse his 
objection to wearing the regulation frock coat; but 
the effect of the King's attitude has been to modify 
profoundly the asperities of politics and to make 
the Socialists realise that social reform is not merely 
consistent with constitutional monarchy, but may 
even be more smoothly attained under its influence. 

In all this the motives of Victor Emmanuel were 
not that shallow and insincere thing called "tact." 
No one uses that banal word in connection with him. 
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King Victor Emmanuel 

It would be impossible, for he has never played the 
courtier to his people. Indeed, he is no courtier to 
anybody, and though he and his wife have always 
been conspicuous by their personal and humane 
service in connection with those terrible disasters that 
have befallen the people at Messina, in Calabria, and 
elsewhere, they have never used that service as a 
mere convention of royalty. Indeed, the King's plain 
intelligence is revolted by any such antiquated affecta- 
tion. When he was leaving after his work at Messina 
an obsequious official explained how the presence of 
the King had alleviated the suffering of the people. 
" Don't talk nonsense," was the King's curt comment. 
No, the democratic attitude is not a pose, but the 
expression of a spiritual unity with the people, born 
of the history of his house. There are few finer stories 
in the records of kings than the loyalty of his grand- 
father, Victor Emmanuel, the King of Sardinia, to 
the cause of the Italian people. It was the House 
of Savoy which was the one beacon of light in the 
dark days of tyranny, when the Italian people 
were struggling towards freedom against the usurpa- 
tions of Austria, the claims of the Vatican, and the 
cruelties of King Bomba, " the negation of God." 
Through all that tragic time the kingdom of Sardinia 
remained true to the cause of popular liberty, and as 
that cause, under Mazzini and Garibaldi, slowly 
emerged to victory in Italy the whole nation gathered 
round Victor Emmanuel II. as the symbol of national 
unity and democratic freedom. The settlement of 
1866 left the great work of Italian regeneration in- 
complete, for Austria still held the Trentino and the 
gates of Italy, but unity was achieved and time would 
fulfil the dreams of complete solidarity. The artful 
diplomacy of Bismarck delayed the fulfilment. There 
is no feat of that astonishing man more remarkable 

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than his success in detaching Italy from its natural 
ally, France, and making it the creature of its historic 
enemy, Austria. But diplomacy, though it may per- 
vert policy, cannot pervert the soul of a people. The 
Crispis and Giolittis might make their alliances with 
Germany, but when the hour struck the nation would 
flow into its natural channel. 

And when the hour came and Signor Salandra 
resigned, the people had not to deal with a recalci- 
trant King. Victor Emmanuel's sympathies had not 
been in doubt, but with the sense of propriety that 
never fails him he had made no attempt to force the 
situation. The obstacles in the way of intervention 
had been formidable. For once — but of course for 
widely opposite motives — the Socialist Left and the 
Vatican were in accord. The position of the Pope 
throughout the war had been extraordinarily com- 
plicated and his action necessarily obscure. Catholic- 
ism like Socialism is international, but the desolation 
of a faithful Catholic country like Belgium should in 
itself have brought to the cause of the Allies the over- 
whelming moral support of the Church of Rome. 
That simple issue, however, was shadowed by other 
considerations. In the great struggle for Italian 
liberty the cause of the Vatican had been allied with 
the cause of Austria, and the establishment of the 
political unity of Italy had sounded the death-knell 
of the temporal power of the Papacy. There had 
followed two generations of hostility between the 
Vatican and the Quirinal — the people united around 
the King, the Church regarding the King as the de- 
spoiler of its prerogatives and looking to Austria as 
its ancient ally and present defender. Hence, when 
the war came, the influence of the Vatican was directed 
to preventing Italy being involved in a conflict with 
Austria, and even Cardinal Mercier's great indictment 
156 



King Victor Emmanuel 

of Germany's crimes in Belgium left the voice of 
Rome silent. 

Now, in his attitude to Rome, the King has been 
at once firm and correct. He neither yields to the 
Vatican where his true functions are concerned, nor 
does he indulge in idle pin-pricks. His attitude may 
be illustrated by two incidents. The first occurred 
when he came to the throne, and was largely the 
cause of the instant impression he made on the 
nation. Where was the murdered Humbert to lie? 
The widowed Queen Margherita wished him to be 
buried at the Superga at Turin, where all the House 
of Savoy lie, with the exception of Victor Emmanuel 
II., the founder of the Italian nation, who is buried 
at the Pantheon at Rome. Her wish was governed 
by her desire, as a faithful Catholic, to avoid wound- 
ing the susceptibilities of the Vatican. But her son 
would not yield to what he regarded as an intolerable 
claim. It is related that he entered his mother's 
boudoir at Monza, pale and tired, and exclaimed, 
" That is arranged — my father will have a fitting 
burial in the Pantheon." " Victor," said his mother, 
" I see you want to break my heart. You offend my 
religion as well as my affections." " I am sorry, 
mother," was the reply. ■' But the religion which is 
offended at a martyr being buried in his own capital 
and lying beside his own father needs radical changes." 
And to the joy of the Italian people, King Humbert 
was laid at rest in Rome. But, having asserted the 
political rights of the Italian nation in Rome, he was 
content, and when a son was born to him he did 
not add to the sorrows of the Vatican by calling 
him the Prince of Rome. He called him the Prince 
of Piedmont. 

In the long struggle for the decision of Italy, the 
hopes of Prince Biilow were founded on the Vatican 

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much more than on the Quirinal. It was known that 
the King would not intrigue against his people, but 
there was no doubt where his sympathies lay. Putting 
aside all considerations of political interest, his demo- 
cratic view of monarchy dissociated him funda- 
mentally from the Imperialism of Prussia and of 
Austria. Even as Crown Prince his influence had 
been used to bring about an approximation to France, 
and his sympathy with English thought, English 
tastes, and, above all, English ideals of government 
was notorious. Early in his reign, his English enthu- 
siasms were much discussed, and in the royal nursery 
the English governess, Miss Dickens, was omnipotent. 
Her decisions on English practice were final. It is 
related that shortly before the birth of Princess 
Mafalda she was called hurriedly to the Queen. On 
entering the room she found the King engaged in an 
amiable dispute with his wife. " Is it not so," he 
said turning to Miss Dickens; "the English always 
wear goloshes on the grass when it is damp? " "I 
am sure they would not do anything so silly," broke 
in the Queen, " and even if they do," she added 
rebelliously, " that is no reason why I should. I have 
been on damp grass all my life and never took any 
harm. Ugly things " (referring to the goloshes), " let 
the English keep them." Perhaps the story is an 
invention, but if Victor Emmanuel is not devoted to 
English goloshes, he is undoubtedly devoted to 
English ideals. 

His action when the crisis arrived, and when it 
became his duty to deal with the situation created 
by the resignation of Signor Salandra, was a true 
interpretation of the spirit of the people. The re- 
signation was the Prime Minister's final challenge to 
the foes of intervention. It seemed for a moment 
that they had won, but only for a moment. The 

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King Victor Emmanuel 

stroke swept away the web of diplomacy that had 
been woven around the position and released the 
feeling of the nation. And in giving that feeling free 
play Victor Emmanuel was not overborne by mob 
emotion, as the German Chancellor suggested. He 
was, as he has always been, the embodiment of the 
national spirit of his country. Italy, after a genera- 
tion of bondage to ideals which were not her ideals, 
to allies with whom she had neither spiritual affinities 
nor political coherences, had broken the chains that 
Bismarck had forged for her. The free genius of her 
people was released, and the passion for liberty that 
had regenerated her in the past found its true expres- 
sion in the struggle for the freedom of the world. 



159 



GENERAL BOTHA 

AND THE SPIRIT OF THE EMPIRE 

Among the figures thrown into relief by the war none 
has more significance than that of General Botha. More 
than any one else perhaps he embodies the conflict 
of ideas of which the war is the expression. He repre- 
sents in its most dramatic aspect that doctrine of 
Empire based on self-government which is the capital 
contribution that Liberal England has made to the 
governance of the world. There has been no braver 
or more momentous act of policy in our time than 
the grant of self-government to the conquered Boer 
States. That act was the supreme purpose upon 
which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had set his 
heart in coming to power, and I have been told that 
it was only the force of his appeal in the Cabinet — an 
appeal that by its simple greatness touched more 
than one of those present to tears — that made that 
daring experiment in freedom possible. How bitterly 
it was opposed is still fresh in our minds. Lord 
Milner's vaticinations in the House of Lords were 
doubtless influenced by the sense of defeat, but they 
were quite sincere. He believed in the Prussian gospel 
of a governing race imposing its civilisation and forms 
of government upon subject peoples by force, and he 
saw in this concession of freedom to the conquered 
states the doom of Empire. In less than ten years he 
was to see the most startling disproof of his theories 
of government that history has afforded. Had self- 
government been denied to South Africa, had the 
old wound of the Boer War been left open and angry, 
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General Botha 



General Botha 

had Botha and Smuts been driven into the ranks of 
the insurgent Boers, South Africa would have gone, 
when the war broke out, almost without a shot being 
fired. We could not have raised a hand to save it. 
But it withstood the shock unflinchingly. It with- 
stood it because it was free. 

Probably the events of the war have furnished no 
greater disappointment to the Kaiser than this. It 
is part of the general disillusion he has suffered in 
regard to the power of this country to play an effective 
part in the war. In his calculations of the material 
factors involved in the great adventure the Kaiser and 
his advisers were generally right. In regard to the 
spiritual factors they were uniformly wrong. They 
believed that the British Empire was a fiction that 
would tumble to the dust at the first breath of real 
challenge. It was an imposing structure, the creation 
of the centuries of good fortune that had attended 
this lucky but incompetent people; but it had no 
reality, because it did not exist by the sanction of the 
sword. Ireland at that moment was on the brink of 
civil war, and the government had not the courage 
to forbid the rebel rising any more than they had the 
courage to suppress the rebellious women who were 
setting fire to private houses and railway stations and 
assaulting the members of the government themselves. 
The army, such as it was, was being openly exploited 
in the interests of the rebels in Ireland, and parlia- 
mentary government was on the point of collapse. 
I know, from one who saw the Kaiser in those 
days, with what interest he was following the drama 
in Ireland. " He could talk," said my informant, 
" of nothing but Sir Edward Carson, whom he had 
seen in the autumn. ' Ah,' he said, ' that is a man. 
He knows what he wants and he means to have it.' 
Again and again his talk reverted to this theme. It 

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seemed to fill his whole mind." There is reason to 
believe that Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambas- 
sador in London, warned his government not to rely 
on the Irish trouble as a factor in their favour. But 
it is one of the mischiefs of personal government that 
it develops secret channels of information, and the 
official view was set aside in favour of what were 
believed to be the direct and indisputable sources of 
knowledge. 

Not less hopeful from the Kaiser's point of view 
was the prospect in India. For years there had been 
widespread unrest in the great Dependency. The 
disastrous action of Lord Curzon in partitioning 
Bengal had sown the seeds of serious trouble. That 
trouble, it is true, had been partially allayed by the 
Morley reforms, the visit of the king, the mitigation 
of the Bengal outrage, and the mild and judicious 
administration of Lord Hardinge. But there was much 
smouldering disquiet, and it was no longer confined 
to the Hindus, but had spread to the Mohammedan 
population, whose extra-territorial allegiance to the 
Sultan as the head of the faithful had been disturbed 
by the Balkan war and the apparent conflict between 
Christianity and Islam. For years the Kaiser had 
been cultivating the Turk, and assuming the role 
of the friend of the Mohammedan world, and there is 
no doubt that when the war came he expected that 
this country would be faced with an Indian crisis that 
would cripple its power of effective intervention in 
the European war. But, as in Ireland, the domestic 
quarrels vanished at the coming of the greater peril, 
and the essential justice of British rule and the 
definite movement under Lord Morley and Lord 
Hardinge towards a more liberal conception of that 
rule bore remarkable fruit. It was not merely that 
men like the late Mr. Gokhale, the greatest statesman 
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General Botha 

that India has produced in our time, were eagerly 
for the Allies. That, of course, went without saying. 
In a conversation I had with Mr. Gokhale on the 
night before he sailed for India the last time his talk 
was dominated by his concern for the interests of 
Great Britain in the struggle. He was returning to 
his country a dying man, and I think he knew it, 
but he was returning with the desire to spend his last 
efforts in using his unrivalled influence over India in 
the cause of this country. But even the extremists 
flung all their energy in the same scale, and one of 
the most fervid appeals to India came from Mr. 
Tilak, the great popular agitator, who in the past 
had suffered long terms of imprisonment in connection 
with his propaganda. 

So far as the self-governing parts of the Empire 
were concerned, the German view was that they were 
negligible, with the important exception of South 
Africa. There w 7 as the weakest link in that very weak 
Imperial chain that hung about the neck of Britannia. 
And, superficially, there was much to justify this view. 
It was only tw r elve years since the Treaty of Vereenig- 
ing had ended the Boer w T ar ; only eight or nine since 
the grant of self-government to the old Boer states. 
Memories lingered long among the dour, primitive 
farmers of the veldt, many of whom, the famous 
De Wet among them, had never accepted the Peace 
of Vereeniging and still nursed their stubborn hostility 
in secret, looking for the day when they would be 
able to hoist the " vierkleur " flag once more. The 
elements of discontent were various. They had that 
strange visionary Van Rensburg at one end of the 
scale and ex-President Steyn at the other. They 
constituted a potential field of rebellion of extra- 
ordinary promise, and it was not unreasonable that 
the Kaiser looked to South Africa as an important 

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ally in his adventure. But, again, he left out of his 
calculations the influence of freedom in the affairs of 
men. And it is not improbable also that he miscal- 
culated both the strength and the motives of Louis 
Botha. It was quite easy to do so, especially for a 
man of the Kaiser's histrionic temperament. For no 
man who has achieved greatness in these days has 
achieved it with a more modest carriage, and few men 
have known better how to keep their own counsel or 
to pursue their ends with a more bland obscurity — a 
mixture of simplicity and subtlety extremely difficult 
to penetrate. He has that imperturbable serenity 
that baffles inquiry, and leaves you on a casual 
acquaintance wondering whether he is merely dull 
or deep. Sir Wilfrid Laurier baffles you with the 
same serene manner, but in this case you are never 
in doubt about the spaciousness of the mental 
operations behind the external mask. But if it is not 
easy to come at the real Botha in a chance meeting, 
it is not difficult to discover the character and motives 
of the man from a study of his career. 

It is less than sixteen years since Louis Botha 
slung his rifle and his bandolier across his shoulder 
and mounting his horse set out from his lonely farm, 
a simple burgher, to join the commando under his 
old friend Lucas Meyer. He must have looked that 
day, as he always looks, a splendid specimen of 
humanity, tall, massive, broad-chested, sitting his 
horse like one who had been born to the saddle, hair 
and beard cropped close, eyes blue and candid, his 
manner slow and untroubled as of one who knew 
nothing of cities, but had lived his life among his 
flocks and his herds on the solitary veldt. And yet 
to the eye of Mayfair, so bright in those days with 
thoughts of the coming triumph and the splendour 
of the mines that were to be won, he would have 
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General Botha 

seemed a ridiculous figure. David going out with his 
sling and pebble to fight the Philistine could hardly 
have presented a more forlorn and hopeless spectacle 
than this stalwart farmer as he set out with his fellow 
burghers to meet in battle all the resources of the 
British Empire. 

Nevertheless, if — remembering the Napoleonic 
maxim — you had looked in his knapsack that day 
you would have found the promise of most wonderful 
things, things much more wonderful than the mar- 
shal's baton which was there. You would have found 
the brevet of a general of the British Army. You 
would have found the premiership of the Transvaal, 
and behind that the premiership of a United South 
Africa stretching from the Cape to the confines of 
Rhodesia. And, strangest of all the ironies of history, 
you would have found the title to Groote Schuur. 
Down in the south Cecil Rhodes was dreaming and 
scheming to found a great South African union. The 
Jameson Raid had gone off at " half-cock." " He has 
upset my apple-cart," said Rhodes. But now at last 
had come the war for which he had been hoping and 
working. After the war, the union. And here in his 
residence at Groote Schuur should be the home of 
the first premier of the new British confederation. 
He did not know that he had built an official home 
for that stalwart burgher who was setting out from 
his farm to give him battle. Time has had few 
stranger revenges. 

Surprise at the contents of the knapsack would have 
been reasonable. For there is no suggestion of romance 
or high destiny about Louis Botha. He belongs to 
the category of those who are made great, not by 
ambition or even by dazzling genius, but by circum- 
stance and character. Without a despotic king, 
Cromwell would have gone to his grave remembered 

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only as a rather gloomy and untidy gentleman who 
brewed beer and drained the fens. Without a foolish 
king, Washington would have had only a local and 
transient reputation as a quiet man of perfect morals 
and exceptional veracity. Without the discovery of 
the gold of the Rand, Louis Botha would still be on 
his Vryheid farm, with which thirty years ago he was 
rewarded by Dinizulu, for whom he and other Boers 
had fought against the rival Zulu chief, receiving in 
return territory which became the " New Republic," 
and which was shortly afterwards incorporated in 
the Transvaal. 

But if it was circumstance which furnished the 
stage, it was General Botha's own unaided qualities 
which won him distinction. It would be easy, on a 
superficial view, to underrate those qualities, and to 
regard his career as a sequence of surprising accidents. 
He is at no pains to correct this view, for he has no 
vanity, no postures, and is indifferent to applause. 
He does not wear his heart on his sleeve, is sparing 
of words and slow to burst into confidences. His 
manner is placid and equable. He seems to draw on 
infinite reserves of patience and contentment, and has 
the unhurried air of one who has always got his 
subject well in hand and has ample time for his 
purposes. It is said by his opponents that he is slow, 
that it is doubtful whether he himself understands the 
details of his own Bills, and that he seldom seems to 
appreciate the point at issue in a debate. It is true 
that he has not the parliamentary genius of General 
Smuts, who impresses one deeply by the acuteness 
of his apprehension and the agility and subtlety of 
his mind. But he has a breadth and simplicity of 
outlook that win confidence much more swiftly and 
finally than the supple dialectics of his colleague. 

Moreover, behind that rather bucolic exterior is 
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General Botha 

an extraordinarily wary mind. If he does not say 
much it is not that he has not much to say, but that 
he has a genius for keeping his own counsel. In that 
he is not unlike Washington. " There," said Quincy 
Adams, pointing to a bust of Washington, " there was 
a fool who made a great reputation by keeping his 
mouth shut." Louis Botha is as little of a fool as 
Washington; but he can keep his mouth shut and 
his eyes open. This natural gift of restraint has been 
strengthened by a life spent in dangers and diffi- 
culties of many kinds — in the field against the Zulus 
and the British, in the pursuit of big game, in conflict 
with Kruger and his Dopper school, and later in the 
midst of the baffling interests of a country which 
offers more perplexing problems for the statesman 
than any country in the world, the problem of the 
Indian, of the native, of the Boer farmer and the 
British mine-owner, and of the relations of white 
labour and black. Mercifully he has been spared a 
Chinese problem as well. For that he remembers 
Campbell-Bannerman with gratitude. 

But with all his caution and kindliness there is 
daring in reserve and with it ruthlessness, as we saw in 
his handling of the great labour dispute. His measures 
then were without precedent in a British community 
for their severity. They won for him a significant 
approval among the reactionary influences in this 
country which at the time were turning more and 
more to counsels of force in dealing with the problems 
of politics and labour. If labour was getting out of 
hand, then what so full of encouragement as an object- 
lesson in martial law as a means of calming unrest ? 
" Hands up ! " and a machine-gun were such a simple 
expedient for dealing with insurgent labour. They 
had been the dream of many an anxious mind in 
England. And now General Botha had turned that 

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dream into a reality. He was at last a really popular 
figure with English Society. It was a distinction that 
had no meaning for him. His action in the famous 
strike, whether right or wrong, was not due to hos- 
tility to labour, or to love of government by force. 
It was due to his habit of meeting an emergency 
with any weapon that the occasion seems to him to 
demand. His natural disposition is towards com- 
promise and a reasonable settlement, for he has no 
fanatical tendencies in any direction and might easily 
pass, on a shallow view, for a trimmer. But though 
he will surrender the secondary things he never 
surrenders the essential things, and though his 
temperament is entirely pacific it has a formidable 
fighting quality in reserve. So long as a patient un- 
ravelling of the knot offers hope there is none more 
patient, but when the sword offers the only solution 
he takes it unwillingly, but very deliberately and 
even ruthlessly. He does not hesitate to shoot. " If 
we are at war, let us be at war," he said when Joubert 
in the early stages of the Boer war was showing what 
seemed to him too much delicacy. It was so that 
Cromwell protested against the nerveless spirit of 
Manchester. It is generally admitted by students of 
the war that had Botha been in command from the 
beginning the course of events would have been even 
more disastrous than they were. After the flight 
from Dundee, Botha, who had risen at a stride from 
a burgher to assistant-general to Meyer, was eager 
to cut Yule's retreat off, and if his advice had been 
followed Yule's column could never have traversed 
that terrible fifty miles of wild, broken country, and 
Ladysmith would have fallen. But Joubert was old 
and humane. He would not risk his men. And later, 
he granted Sir George White a neutral camp for his 
sick, relieved the British commander of a grave 
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General Botha 

anxiety, and materially added to the resisting power 
of the garrison. Much in the same way, Lord Roberts 
later on greatly prolonged the resisting powers of the 
Boers by refusing to sacrifice more men at Paarde- 
burg in order to complete the destruction of the 
enemy. 

But even more important was the failure of Botha 
to impose his strategy on Joubert in regard to Lady- 
smith. He would have left only a trivial force to 
hold White in the town and would have descended 
with the main army upon Maritzburg and Durban, 
with the result that we should have had to commence 
the reconquest of South Africa from the sea coast. 
Probably we owe the possession of South Africa 
to-day to the fact that Joubert was old. How 
different a colour events took when Joubert died and 
Louis Botha succeeded him we have the memories 
of Colenso and Spion Kop to remind us. There was 
no mercy now. At Colenso General Botha saw, not 
unmoved by admiration for the bravery of the foe, 
Long's gunners galloping to death. But his admira- 
tion and pity did not check his purpose. He brought 
forward a body of his best burghers who shot down 
the gunners as they stood to their guns. It has been 
observed that in similar circumstances Joubert would 
probably have said, " Let them alone, poor fellows. 
Enough have been killed for one day." The later 
developments of the war showed other qualities 
besides daring and ruthlessness. He became a tac- 
tician and a strategist of large sweep and rapid 
execution and like Lee and all great generals dis- 
covered a genius for estimating an opponent's in- 
tentions by realising his character. 

To this quality of cautious daring, he unites 
extreme moderation of thought. In his temper he 
resembles Lee much more than Jackson, for he has 

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no fanaticism. And like Lee his heart was not in the 
war. He did his utmost to avoid it. Long before the 
outbreak he was at issue with the Kruger regime 
and his opposition to the old President in regard to 
the Dynamite concession brought against him a 
charge of using his position as a member of the 
Volksraad to help the mineowners. He took an 
action for libel against his assailants, but withdrew 
it on an apology being offered. 

His subsequent career in the war blotted out all 
suspicions of his loyalty to the Boer cause, and no 
one questioned that loyalty when at Vereeniging, 
after all was over and he addressed the men who 
had followed him in battle so long, he advised the 
acceptance of terms. But it is true, nevertheless, 
that he is too cosmopolitan in his spirit and outlook 
to be a whole-hearted nationalist. Of Huguenot as 
well as Dutch extraction, born in a British colony 
(Natal), and married to a brilliant Irishwoman, it is 
not remarkable that he should not conform to the 
old Dopper view or be in sympathy with General 
Hertzog. 

The truth is that in their dreams of the future 
Cecil Rhodes and Louis Botha were not so far asunder 
as they seemed. Both saw a united South Africa as 
the goal ; but while Rhodes thought of the British as 
the dominant race, Botha aimed at the emergence 
of an Afrikander people embodying Briton and Boer 
in a union, indissoluble because the factors were no 
longer distinguishable or separable. This purpose 
may be seen through all his policy after the war. It 
was this purpose, for example, that dictated his 
opposition to the Transvaal farmers' demand for 
protection against the neighbouring colonies. It was 
a bold line to take against his old soldiers; but he 
knew that if protection were once adopted it would 
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General Botha 

be a fatal bar to union. How true his instinct was 
was evident when, afterwards, he carried his resolu- 
tion for closer union with only one dissentient. 

The consolidation of that great achievement needed 
time, and time was not allowed. Less than six years 
had passed since Louis Botha became premier of a 
united South Africa when the supreme test was 
applied to the work of Campbell-Bannerman. The 
menace which General Botha had to face came from 
two quarters. The first and the most reputable was 
the farmer of the back- veldt, the burly Dopper of the 
Kruger school, dour, unyielding after the fashion 
of the Ulster type, who had never accepted the settle- 
ment and wanted only to lapse back into the ancient 
rut of his fathers. With this element, of which that 
strange seer, Van Rensburg, was the prophet and 
General Hertzog the practical hope, General Botha 
knew he could make no terms. The dream he had 
realised of a united South Africa on the basis of a 
free Afrikander community, in which the interests 
of Briton and Boer were finally merged, was as hateful 
to these stern old Puritans as militarism would have 
been. From them rebellion was inevitable. But 
behind that element was another more treacherous 
and more formidable. It is not clear how far General 
Botha suspected the existence of the Beyers con- 
spiracy, but if he had any suspicion at all it could not 
have been very strong, or General Beyers would not 
have been allowed to remain commandant-general. 
But the facts since disclosed show that Beyers and 
Maritzhad been conspiring with the Germans for a con- 
siderable time, being especially active during July, 
and that Maritz had drawn up an agreement with 
the governor of German South- West Africa. It was 
with a view, no doubt, to the storm that he knew 
was coming that Beyers gave Maritz military control 

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on the Union border where he would be conveniently 
situated for operating with the Germans. 

Whether he suspected the full measure of the peril 
or not, General Botha, with his habitual circumspec- 
tion, was fully prepared for emergencies. He knew 
that his agreement with Lord Kitchener to raise 
an expeditionary force for the invasion of German 
South- West Africa would be used as a weapon against 
him by the irreconcilables — that it would be said, as 
Hertzog did say, that he caused the rebellion by 
that act. But he knew also that some rising was 
certain and that, apart from the invasion of the 
German territory, the gathering of the expeditionary 
force would give him the means for swift and decisive 
action. His decision saved South Africa. A weaker 
man would, in his place, have waited and temporised, 
and it is clear now that any delay would have been 
fatal. For the conspiracy gathered impetus with 
extraordinary rapidity, being largely favoured by 
the successes of Germany in the first weeks of the war. 
The effect of those successes on the opinion of the 
world was not realised here. Indeed the magnitude 
of those successes was not known here. The great 
defeat of the French in Lorraine, for example, was not 
heard of until much later, but it was known in South 
Africa and had an important bearing on the prospects 
of the conspirators. At this time the real danger was 
still undiscovered. So far as there was a rebel move- 
ment at all, it existed apparently only among the 
back- veldt Boers. Beyers was busy consolidating 
his position in readiness to strike. In all this episode 
this man's part was the basest. De Wet was a mis- 
guided man but he was not a traitor, for he had never 
accepted the Peace of Vereeniging. Hertzog played 
an obscure and unpleasant rdle and, although his 
name was freely used by the conspirators, never 
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General Botha 

repudiated the rebels. But there is no evidence that 
he actively or even covertly helped them. Even 
Maritz, traitor as he was, seems to have been a traitor 
because he had a real attachment to the Germans. 
But the treachery of Beyers was without a redeeming 
feature. His motive seems to have been one of sheer 
ambition, for it is evident that he dreamed of becom- 
ing, with the help of Germany, the President of a new 
republic. His duplicity was as skilful as it was shame- 
ful. He remained Commandant-General as late as 
September 15, and so acquainted himself with all 
the dispositions of General Botha, and was able to 
forward his plans by placing men like Maritz and 
Kemp in control of the army in the critical areas. 
The measure of his ignominy is shown by the fact 
that on the very day (Friday, September 11) on 
which he sent his telegram of good wishes to Sir 
Duncan Wallace, the commander of the force which 
was embarking for Luderitz Bay, he interviewed 
Maritz and Kemp and arranged for starting the 
rebellion on the following Tuesday. 

The selection of that day had a peculiar significance. 
It was the 15I1 of September. Now in one of his visions 
the seer Van Rensburg had seen the number 15 on 
a dark cloud, from which there issued blood, and 
following this portent he saw General Delarey re- 
turning home without his hat, followed immediately 
by a carriage covered with flowers. This vision was 
interpreted as forecasting honour to Delarey and a 
successful rebellion on the 15th of a certain month. 
It is not probable that Beyers, deep in his German 
plot, was very much concerned about visions, but he 
was concerned to link up the honest, if stupid, Boer 
superstition with his cunning purpose, and the 15th 
was chosen as " the day " for that reason. It had 
originally been the 15th of August, and a great meeting 

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was actually held that day to inaugurate the rebellion, 
but owing to a peaceful address which General 
Delarey delivered at the request of General Botha, 
the gathering broke up without result. The inter- 
vening month, with its German victories, had 
strengthened the plot, and Beyers counted confidently 
on raising the rebel flag on the 15th September. 

On that day a strange event happened which, what- 
ever the truth about it, served Beyers' aims. General 
Delarey was riding with Beyers in a motor car at night 
when he was shot dead by a policeman who was alleged 
to have mistaken him for an armed burglar who had 
been carrying on his depredations in the district. 
The event startled the world and its effect on the 
Boer farmers was electrical. It seemed to suggest new 
interpretations of the vision of Van Rensburg, and 
it inflamed the smouldering feeling against the Botha 
policy. It has never, I think, been alleged that 
Delarey had any connection with the plot, and no one 
who knew that chivalrous man would believe it if it 
were. Among all the Boer leaders he was the most 
attractive figure — simple, gentle, and singularly 
winning in address. De Wet was stubborn as a mule 
and solid as a rock. You could make nothing of him. 
But Delarey, who had Huguenot blood in him, had 
a sweetness of manner and a simple candour that 
won your confidence at once. But though he was not 
in the plot he was a name to conjure with among the 
Boers, and his tragic death, coupled with the story of 
the vision, which had had a wide currency, made the 
outlook very grave and the hopes of the rebels high. 

A false move by General Botha at this crisis would 
have been fatal. It would have been easy to be rash, 
easier to be too timid. But with characteristic wari- 
ness he tried conciliation on the one hand while 
strengthening his military preparations on the other. 
i74 



General Botha 

His mediator with the rebels was ex-President Steyn, 
whose attitude throughout was wholly admirable; 
but Beyers only used the interval to fan the flame of 
rebellion, and when the stern, unbending De Wet 
openly joined him there was no hope of a reconcilia- 
tion. The campaign was a swift and overwhelming 
triumph for General Botha. De Wet had either lost 
the elusiveness that kept Lord Kitchener so long on 
the run, or he was watched by one who knew his 
ingenuities too well. In any case he was speedily 
rounded up. Beyers was killed in crossing a river, 
Maritz fled into German territory with his followers, 
and in three months the rising was suppressed, and 
General Botha was free to enter upon the task of 
driving the Germans out of South- West Africa — a 
task which he has accomplished with extraordinary 
completeness and rapidity. 

It would be too much to suggest that all the dis- 
contents in the Transvaal have disappeared. That 
cannot happen while the Boer generation that is 
rooted in the past survives. But there can be no 
revival of the dream of the Kaiser — cherished no 
doubt since the day that he sent his famous tele- 
gram to President Kruger — of a conflagration that 
should end the British tenure in South Africa and 
strengthen his arm in his struggle for world dominion. 
The grant of freedom to South Africa had made it a 
bulwark of the Empire in the hour of need, and 
General Botha the champion of the British idea of 
liberty against the Prussian idea of racial subjection. 
The seed of liberty has never borne more splendid 
fruit. 



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KING GUSTAV 

The Prussian doctrine of the unprovoked war has 
two advantages. It means military preparedness and 
diplomatic preparedness. Germany began the war 
not only with an overwhelming military advantage, 
but with an equally and almost more dangerous 
diplomatic advantage. With the bursting of the storm 
it revealed its concealed batteries in every country. 
Its agents were active from India to Chili, and — while 
the British Press Censor was performing his amazing 
feats of suppression, including the suppression of Sir 
Edward Grey's speech of August 3rd — its apologists 
were stating the German case in every tongue and 
giving neutral opinion the inspiration of Berlin. It 
was Bismarck who first taught Germany how to make 
the Press an engine of diplomacy. The revelations of 
Busch, his press agent, are a record of unexampled 
political cunning and immorality and of journalistic 
servility. His tradition survived his fall, and when 
the war broke out the Allies for a time found them- 
selves beaten out of the field by the German pro- 
paganda in neutral countries. Britain, as the central 
ganglion of the cable system of the world, had the 
mechanical advantage, but it did not know how to use 
it. Nowhere was the lead of the Germans more con- 
spicuous than in the Scandinavian countries, which, 
by an unfortunate arrangement, had been in the 
habit of receiving their supply of news from Renter's 
through Wolff's Bureau in Berlin. That Bureau is 
for all practical purposes a department of the German 
Foreign Office, and it followed that when the crash 
came the Scandinavian countries were fed direct 
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King Gustav 



from the Wilhelmstrasse and were kept in almost 
complete ignorance of the English case. The mischief 
was corrected in time, for of course the connection of 
Reuter with Wolff was instantly broken, but grave 
harm had been done and the most serious peril only 
narrowly avoided. 

For the situation in Sweden was one which justified 
the Kaiser in indulging in extravagant hopes that the 
country would give him practical sympathy if not 
active support. It had just passed through a serious 
national crisis, but it had passed through it without 
a real settlement of the issues that had been raised, 
and it was conceivable that the outbreak of war 
would fan those issues into a blaze, and that the 
nation, in spite of its passion for peace and its spiritual 
attachment to the cause of the Allies, would be 
stampeded into war. We can best appreciate the 
position by examining the crisis and its causes. 

The crisis had long been foreseen by those who 
were familiar with the character and career of King 
Gustav V. and the democratic spirit of the Swedish 
people. A collision between two such discordant 
elements was inevitable. That it occurred on the 
Russian issue showed that the king had astuteness. 
He could not have challenged the principle of con- 
stitutional government in circumstances which gave 
him a better fighting chance of success. He seized 
an opportunity which enabled him to assume the role 
of the patriotic king at a moment when the mind of 
the country was genuinely disturbed by a vague 
external menace. The menace of course came from 
Russia, and it was aggravated by the fate of Finland. 
That unhappy country, with its brave people, its free 
institutions, and its splendid intellectual enthusiasm, 
had fallen under the remorseless heel of its great 
neighbour. There is no tragedy in Europe more bitter 

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than thatof this small and highly civilised race, frowned 
upon by the guns of an alien fortress, its judges flung 
into prison, its freedom destroyed, its land overrun 
by Russian soldiers, its railways all designed for the 
purposes of military occupation and repression. 

The fate that had overtaken Finland had shadowed 
the sky of Scandinavia. Throughout Sweden and 
Norway there was grave concern. What guarantee 
had they that the fate of Finland might not one day 
be theirs ? They did not find any in the public spirit 
of Europe which was cynically indifferent to the small 
nations, and they watched with deepening distress the 
sanction which England gave to the designs of Russia. 
Meanwhile the strategic railways that had been built 
in Finland were brought right up to the Swedish 
frontier, and the air was full of the rumours of 
espionage. There had been many gravely disturbing 
episodes, notably the attempt of Russia in 1907 to 
fortify the Aland Islands, which would have closed 
the Gulf of Bothnia to Sweden and placed the country 
at the mercy of its great neighbour. That attempt 
had been thwarted largely by the action of this 
country, but subsequent events had only served to 
keep the alarm active. Even so recently as the spring 
of 1913 a troop of Russians had been over the 
Swedish border. The fact was kept out of the Press, 
but it could not be concealed, and it created the pro- 
foundest disquiet. In these circumstances only one 
feeling pervaded Sweden as to the necessity of national 
defence. If it was to preserve its freedom and 
neutrality it must rely on its own capacity to resist 
attack. On this point there was no difference of 
opinion between Liberals, Conservatives, and Social 
Democrats. 

It is when we come to the question of means, or 
rather of procedure, that we touch the point of con- 
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King Gustav 



flict — or rather the point of apparent conflict, for, as 
I snail show, the real conflict was not on external but 
on internal policy. In the autumn of 1911 a great wave 
of Liberalism, comparable to that of 1906 in this 
country, swept over Sweden; 164 Liberals and 
Socialists being returned against 64 Conservatives. 
Mr. Staaf , a man of marked ability and high character, 
became Prime Minister, and he at once appointed a 
Commission, consisting of members of all parties, to 
inquire into the subject of national defence. That 
Commission had not yet reported, but two proposals 
had emerged. One related to the need of a large 
expenditure to make the existing defences efficient. 
With this need Mr. Staaf proposed to deal at once by 
raising £3,000,000 by means of a graduated tax on 
the larger properties. The other proposal was, that the 
period of service should be increased from eight to 
ten or even twelve months in order to permit of winter 
training. This proposal, however, Mr. Staaf would 
not put into effect until the country had given a 
decision on the subject at the election which was to 
take place in the autumn of 1914. 

It was on this question that the crisis occurred. 
The Conservatives, angry at the threatened graduated 
tax on big incomes — a tax made necessary by the 
condition into which their administration had allowed 
the defences to fall — demanded that the period of 
service should be extended at once, and the king 
associated himself with their demand. He addressed 
a gathering of peasants, organised by the Con- 
servatives, and declared that " he did not share the 
view that the question of military service should 
not be settled now." This challenge was promptly 
taken up by the Government and the people. A great 
demonstration, attended by nearly 50,000 people, was 
held in Stockholm in support of the Government, and 

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as the result of an extremely unsatisfactory reply 
from the king to an expostulation on the subject of 
the speech to the peasants, Mr. Staaf tendered the 
resignation of his ministry. 

There was no reason to doubt the sincerity of the 
King in the matter ; but there was as little reason to 
doubt that he deliberately chose the ground of his 
quarrel with the Liberal Administration. Unlike his 
father, King Oscar, who was an extremely amiable 
and conciliatory monarch, he had never borne the 
restraints of constitutionalism cheerfully. The great- 
grandson of Bernadotte, he should know as well as 
any man the perils of absolutism, for his great 
ancestor stood guard beside the scaffold in the Place 
de la Concorde when Louis XVI. was beheaded and 
he himself occupied the only throne that connects 
us with the Napoleonic tradition. Bernadotte re- 
tained it because he won the confidence of the 
Swedish people, and because he discreetly deserted 
Napoleon for the Allies when he saw the inevitable 
end approaching. 

But King Gustav was not disposed to bow to the 
modern conception of kingship. He is that most 
unfortunate of men, a constitutional monarch with 
an absolutist temperament. In this, as in all else, he 
is singularly unlike his father. Oscar was genial, 
expansive, all for compromise and peace. He culti- 
vated the art of popularity with brilliant success, 
made every one at ease and talked with extraordinary 
fluency and enthusiasm on any subject. He had a 
genuine taste for art, and his second son is one of the 
most distinguished painters of Sweden. Gustav has 
none of his father's bonhomie and as little of his taste 
for artistic culture. He is tall, thin, and ascetic, rigid 
in bearing and opinion, fond of outdoor sports, 
especially tennis, of which he is a brilliant exponent, 
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King Gustav 



and of bridge. In personal contact with strangers 
he is shy, and a conversation with him is difficult and 
full of rather trying pauses. " He has no sense of 
beauty and no care for it/' said the late Mr. Augustus 
Hare, who in 1878, when Prince Gustav was in his 
twentieth year, acted as his travelling tutor, accom- 
panying him to Rome and London, " but he has the 
most transparent, truthful, simple, loyal character 
I have known." 

His father was a charmeur, and gave one the 
impression of insincerity. King Gustav is always 
sincere and always serious. He is not merely a 
teetotaler himself, but a temperance advocate, and 
in his earlier days did much by his example to further 
the cause among officers and men. His love of simpli- 
city is notorious. When he came to the throne he 
refused to go through the elaborate ceremony of 
coronation, and on all occasions he discountenances 
pomp and display. His plainness of life and his sense 
of justice are illustrated by the story of how, during 
the illness of King Oscar, he settled a strike of the 
servants of his household for higher wages. Their 
complaints reached the ears of the Crown Prince, 
who called a meeting of the servants, took the chair, 
and asked each in turn his grievance. " You are quite 
right," he said at the end. " You should have told 
me of this before. I shall see that your wages are 
raised." His home life has been shadowed by the 
uncertain health of his wife, Queen Victoria, the 
daughter of a Grand Duke of Baden; but there has 
been no whisper against his private life. 

But one may have all the private virtues and be an 
indifferent king, just as one may be an excellent 
Liberal in theory and in personal relationships an 
extremely illiberal and despotic person. Charles the 
First was rich in private virtues and personal charm ; 

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but as a king he was impossible. Cowley's description 
of him has been applied to King Gustav: "Never 
was there a more gracious prince or a more proper 
gentleman. In every pleasure he was temperate, in 
conversation mild and grave, in friendship constant, 
to his servants liberal, to his Queen faithful and 
loving, in battle brave, in sorrow and captivity 
resolved, in death most Christian and forgiving." 

It is unfortunate that with all his excellent personal 
qualities his public attitude is mistaken and auto- 
cratic. He would, like Charles, be " a king indeed." 
His admiration for the Kaiser has been much com- 
mented on. It is an admiration not only for the man 
but for his conception of his office. On all critical 
occasions Gustav has shown his despotic temper. 
When his father yielded to the Liberals in 1901 
he was opposed by the Crown Prince, and in the 
conflict with Norway Gustav adopted a no less anti- 
popular attitude. Had he had his way at the time of 
the dissolution of the union between Norway and 
Sweden he would have resisted that wise act. Indeed, 
when the conflict between the two countries over the 
question of separate consular services — a conflict 
which hastened the dissolution — was in progress he 
was anxious to march an army into Norway to reduce, 
as he put it, "his father's rebellious and disloyal 
subjects to entire submission." It was even suggested 
that he had entered into a secret understanding 
with the Kaiser which would have brought Germany 
into the threatened conflict with possibly disastrous 
results to Europe. His action over the consular 
service led to Norway cutting off his allowance, and 
as he refused to retract his words it was never renewed. 
When the dissolution took place he sought to get the 
deficiency made good by Sweden ; but the Diet firmly 
declined to increase the civil list. 
182 



King Gustav 



It is obvious from all this that a collision between 
the king and his parliament was inevitable. With the 
sweeping Liberal victory in 191 1 it was made immi- 
nent. The Conservatives, angered at what seemed like 
their complete and final obliteration, did not hesitate 
to adopt the familiar device of creating a Jingo panic 
against the Government. They coquetted with the 
militarists, who on their part were indignant with the 
Government for having for the first time appointed 
civil Army and Navy Ministers. And they found an 
easy instrument in the king, who told the peasants 
that he preferred to rely on the opinion of his military 
advisers. For months past there had been a growing 
irritation, and the disposition of the king to take an 
independent line and to ignore his ministers steadily 
developed. The crisis was only the culmination of the 
feud. The King chose his ground skilfully. He had 
exploited a very real fear that pervaded his people, 
and he had behind him the Conservatives and the 
country party. 

The election which followed the resignation of the 
Staaf ministry had left a position of something like 
stalemate. A large Liberal and Socialist majority was 
returned, but Hr. Staaf's own followers had been 
substantially reduced, and of the three parties the 
Conservative was now the largest. In the circum- 
stances the king called on Hr. Hammarskjold to form 
a cabinet, the most distinguished member of which 
was Hr. Wallenberg, the Foreign Minister, a banker 
and a man of stainless reputation, high capacity, and 
disinterested patriotism. 

This was the situation at the beginning of August. 
The internal crisis had passed for the time, but the 
issues that had raised it were only dormant. In the 
first challenge of the king to his parliament the king 
had won, but the struggle would be resumed. His 

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partial success was not due to any failure in the 
democratic sentiment of the country, but to the 
distrust of Russia which was as prevalent among 
Liberals and Socialists as among Conservatives. It 
was that distrust upon which the Kaiser relied in his 
calculations in regard to the Scandinavian position. 
He had much solid ground for confidence. For years 
he had been watching the growing concern of the 
northern kingdoms about the intentions of Russia, 
and with that skill of which he is so accomplished a 
master he had assumed the r61e of the friend of 
Scandinavia just as he had made himself the patron 
of the Mahommedan world. His annual visits to the 
Norwegian waters were the occasion of astute acts 
of friendship and patronage (entirely wasted, let it 
be remarked, on the Norwegian people), and he had 
promoted the close intercourse of his country with 
the Swedish nation. That intercourse had become a 
dominant factor in the life of Sweden. In literature, 
as in commerce, the influence of Germany was in the 
ascendant, for the natural advantages which Germany 
had had been enhanced by that industrious attention 
to detail which is characteristic of the German system 
of peaceful penetration, promoted from the head and 
extending to the smallest interests of life. The 
Swedish people, with their love of peace, their 
devotion to the cause of nationality, and their 
advanced democratic leanings were spiritually allied 
not to Germany, whose militarism they detested, but 
to England. That spiritual attachment, however, had 
little to feed on, for the English governmental system 
had no propagandist skill, and even the English news 
came filtered through Berlin. If the Kaiser was en- 
titled to regard the fear of Russia as a sufficient offset 
against the popular democratic sympathies of Sweden, 
he was equally entitled to look to the king for sym- 
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King Gustav 



pathy with his cause. His temper, as we have seen, 
disposed him to favour the German view of kingship, 
and he had a powerful domestic attachment to 
Germany through his wife. Finally, Russia herself 
at the beginning of the war gave the Kaiser substan- 
tial help by issuing, with astonishing folly, the fore- 
cast of a new scheme which practically meant the 
obliteration of the few remnants of Finnish liberty. 
The scheme was quickly repudiated or explained 
away, but the harm it did could be measured by the 
sensation which was reflected at the time in the 
Swedish and Norwegian newspapers. 

On the face of it, it seemed that the Kaiser had 
all the cards in his hand. He had but to play upon 
the fear of Russia in order to bring Sweden over to 
his side, and if Sweden, why not Scandinavia as a 
whole? He set to work with characteristic energy. 
Wolff's Bureau flooded the Scandinavian press with 
news made in Germany. But that was not enough. 
There lived in Berlin a son of Bjornsen the dramatist. 
He had married a German wife and was in sympathy 
with his adopted country. What so natural as to 
convert a man with such a name into a news agency 
for supplying Scandinavia with the pure milk of the 
Prussian gospel ? The innocent Swedes might distrust 
Wolff. They could not distrust a Bjornsen. Nor was 
this all. In the crisis through which Sweden had just 
passed, a conspicuous part on the king's side had been 
played by Dr. Sven Hedin, the explorer, who had been 
in the forefront of the anti-Russian and militarist cam- 
paign. When the war came he was the hot gospeller 
of the German cause, and he was promptly comman- 
deered by the Kaiser to visit the battlefields and 
write up the German victories for the enlightenment 
of his country. Meanwhile, German missionaries 
were spreading the true faith in Scandinavia itself. 

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Baron von Kuhlmann, fresh from England, where 
he had been the under-study to successive ambassa- 
dors, was missionary-in-chief — a smooth-tongued 
person with an engaging air of frankness that only 
half-hid as cunning a plotter as the Wilhelmstrasse 
ever sent out to lay diplomatic mines. Albert Siide- 
kim, the Socialist deputy, was sent to win the Swedish 
Socialists to the cause of German kultur, and Pro- 
fessor Wilhelm Ostwald followed with an unofficial 
bribe to Sweden in the shape of a Baltic Empire, 
including Norway, Denmark, and Finland. It was to 
be under the protection of Germany and the official 
language was to be German. The incident, like so 
many others, showed how German diplomacy defeats 
all its elaborate scheming by a gaucherie due to its 
lack of imagination. Sweden was outraged by the 
offer of a bribe it did not want and would not have. 
It had long since passed through the crude and violent 
ambitions that obsessed the Prussian mind. It had 
had its days of glory and conquest while Prussia and 
the Hohenzollerns were mere supers on the stage of 
Europe, and it had no taste for the dreams of empire 
— much less an empire under German tutelage and 
talking the German tongue. 

But even without this sublime piece of folly the 
hopes of the Kaiser were doomed. He had all the 
cards except the ace, and that was with the Allies. 
For with a sure and unfaltering instinct the heart of 
the Swedish people was with free England. Even the 
deep and not unreasonable fear of Russia was over- 
borne by faith in this country which, whatever its 
failures, had stood for the cause of liberty and for the 
rights of the small nationality. The triumph of 
Prussia and of the gospel of might would be the 
death-knell of freedom, and the vision of a great 
Swedish empire was only a bait in a trap that would 
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King Gustav 



imprison the free soul of Scandinavia for ever. The 
tragedy of Belgium was before their eyes. What 
respect, what loyalty, what sympathy could Sweden 
look for from the authors of that colossal infamy? 
Herr Suderkum was given his hearing and his answer. 
It came from the pen of Mr. Branting, the leader of 
the Swedish Socialists and one of the ablest political 
thinkers in Europe. Suderkum returned discomfited 
and Ostwald went back amid a shout of mingled 
scorn and laughter. The critical moment was passed, 
and the Kaiser's schemes had come to nought. Mr. 
Wallenburg held to the policy of neutrality with 
undeviating courage and arranged the meeting of the 
three kings at Malmo, which consolidated Scandinavia 
on a basis of non-intervention. And when, having 
failed to bribe Sweden, the Kaiser proceeded to 
attempt to coerce it by making its timber trade, the 
greatest of its industries, contraband, the failure of 
the German propaganda was consummated. The 
pro-German influence in high places was extinguished 
and Sweden's neutrality secure. No country has had 
a more difficult path to tread in this war, and she 
has pursued it bravely and honourably. The Allies 
will not forget this when peace comes. 



187 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 

AND GERMAN GENERALSHIP 

There is an excellent story current just now which 
is not only amusing, but illuminating, and that for the 
reason that it was made in Germany and may be 
supposed, in some measure, to reflect German opinion. 
It takes the form of a forecast of the discussion of the 
terms of peace. Germany has won, and makes three 
demands upon England. First: an indemnity of a 
thousand million sterling. It is accepted. Second: 
the transfer of the British fleet to Germany. Even 
that is accepted. Third: the transfer to England of 
the German corps diplomatique. It is too much. No, 
says John Bull, rather than that we will fight to the 
last drop of our blood. 

It may, in the light of events, seem strange that 
Germany should be dissatisfied with the results of 
her diplomacy. That diplomacy, it would seem, has 
had some conspicuous successes. It has involved 
Turkey in the war and so added enormously to the 
gravity of the Allies' task, and it has kept the Balkan 
States disunited and quiescent when every instinct 
should have prompted them to unity in the common 
cause of freedom. These were great triumphs, but they 
were the triumphs of diplomacy in corrupt conditions. 
Whenever Germany has had to deal with conditions 
calling for more reputable methods, her failure has 
been complete. The misunderstanding of the spirit 
of America is the most noticeable case. She thought 
that America, because she was a non-militarist country, 
was a coward and could be " bluffed " into the accept - 
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Marshal von Hindenburg 

ance of Germany's bullying conditions. Her only 
achievement was to convert the United States into a 
potential enemy of the first magnitude. The failure of 
her great diplomatic campaign in Italy — though here 
it was conducted with much more skill and suavity 
by Prince Biilow — was even more serious. And in 
Scandinavia her elaborate preparations were defeated 
by her methods and ended in discomfiture. 

But it is not only in diplomacy that Germany has 
failed. It may be that there will soon be a revised 
version of the story I have told, in which the final de- 
mand of Germany will be that, having agreed to take 
her diplomatists, we shall take her generals as well. 
For if the diplomacy of Germany has revealed a 
capacity for blundering that has astonished all the 
world (with, perhaps, the exception of Mr. Bernard 
Shaw who still seems to preserve a childlike faith in the 
Wilhelmstrasse) , her generalship has been hardly less 
conspicuous for its failure. 

Nor is this a matter for astonishment. One of the 
ablest critics of the war of 1870 has said that the 
Prussian generalship in that struggle was inferior to 
anything in military history except the French 
generalship. And Bismarck's view was hardly less 
contemptuous. Through the letters which he wrote to 
his wife during the war there runs a note of unceasing 
complaint against the incompetence of the generals. 
He respects "good old von Moltke " and von Roon; 
but for the rest he has the most withering scorn. They 
blunder and blunder, and it is only the bravery of the 
men, he says, that saves the day. 

The truth probably is that the Prussian genius is too 
mechanical and too doctrinaire to be productive of the 
highest qualities of generalship. It is governed by 
formulas, and if the formulas fail it lacks that swift 
adaptability to new conditions which is the secret of 



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success. The great maxim of Napoleon, " Je m'engage, 
et puis je vois/' has no place in its iron regulations, 
and it would shudder at the empirical daring that 
makes Sir John French the terror of orthodoxy and 
one of the most brilliant generals in the field to-day. 
There is no theory that Sir John French will not out- 
rage if the occasion demands it, for he is the master 
and not the slave of his theories. But the Prussian's 
pathetic faith in his machine and his theories survives 
all disaster, and after months of terrible experience his 
men are still sent in close formation to the slaughter. 

It is probably the consciousness of this failure in 
generalship that is the secret of the extraordinary 
hero-worship of which Von Hindenburg has been 
made the subject throughout Germany. The psycho- 
logy of a people is the truest guide to the realities of a 
military situation. Von Hindenburg himself has said 
that the war will be won by the side with the steadier 
nerves. Now nothing is more remarkable than the 
contrast between the temper of Paris and London and 
the temper of Berlin. Both in France and in England 
there is a sense of resolution, equally removed from 
fear and extravagant hope. Throughout the war there 
have been no popular demonstrations, no mamckings, 
no outbursts of hate or jingo frenzy. The temper has 
been steady, grave, determined, and very silent. 
There has not been, either in London or Paris, a single 
great ebullition of public feeling since the war began. 
It is to Prussia that we have to go for the emotions 
of the war. Every success is made the occasion of 
extravagant rejoicing, the ringing of bells, the waving 
of flags, public holidays, decorated streets. It is a 
people hungry for victory and snatching eagerly at 
every crumb that is offered. Their infantile hate is as 
significant as their infantile joy. An American who 
was recently in Berlin has described to me his visit to 
190 



Marshal von Hindenburg 

a concert at a covered beer-garden there. The patriotic 
songs passed with ordinary applause; but at the 
" Hymn of Hate " the whole audience leapt on to the 
chairs and tables in a frenzy of passion. That scene 
would not be thinkable to-day in either London or 
Paris. Its significance is in the fact that Hate is the 
child of Fear. 

But even more symptomatic of the " nerves " of 
Germany is the idolatry of Hindenburg. It has lost 
something of its freshness to-day, for weary months 
haVe passed and Warsaw remains uncaptured. But 
he is still the one hope in the general bankruptcy of 
German generalship, the one leader to whom Germany 
looks. It cannot surrender its faith in him without 
surrendering its faith in itself. There is no parallel to 
the frantic enthusiasm that his name has evoked. 
If he had descended like an archangel from the skies, 
and swept the Russian armies before him into the 
Black Sea, there could have been no more extra- 
vagant acclamation. Towns and villages have been 
renamed after him; the Hindenburgstrasse would 
seem to have become as common as the Friedrich- 
strasse ; the Universities have showered their dignities 
upon him; Hindenburg marches by the score have 
come for his acceptance ; hundreds of cigar merchants 
have implored him to permit them to associate his 
name with their products; honours and gifts, 
telegrams and decorations, have inundated him 
beyond any precedent. 

When one compares this prodigality of premature 
gratitude with the niggardly story of 1870, and re- 
members the growls of Bismarck because his son 
" Bill," after risking his life before Metz, could not, 
for all his father's influence, get a trifling recognition 
as a reward, we understand the change that has come 
over Prussia in the interval. This shallow emotional- 
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The War Lords 

ism is a new growth. It springs from the same root as 
the sentimental considerations which have so largely 
governed German military action in the field, leading 
generals to attempt tasks not for practical reasons but 
in order to keep an anniversary, or to placate popular 
opinion, or to conceal a real reverse by a worthless 
demonstration or by actual falsification. All this is 
so unlike the Prussian spirit of 1870 as to predicate 
a new people. 

Now undoubtedly the achievement which gave rise 
to the extravagant adulation of Hindenburg was a 
very notable thing. The victory of the Masurian lakes, 
which resulted in the destruction of three Russian 
army corps and the death of General Samsonov — not, 
it would seem, by his own hand as was generally 
believed — is the one indisputable triumph in the field 
on a large scale that can be put to Germany's credit at 
the end of nine months' war. Its military consequence 
has much diminished since the affair took place. 
Measured by the standards of past wars it was one of 
the greatest and most complete disasters in history, 
and in the horror of its circumstances — the shrieks of 
hosts of men and horses sucked into those terrible 
swamps are said to have driven even some of the 
German officers insane — it has rarely been paralleled. 
But in the perspective of this vast war it is seen to 
shrink to small military dimensions. Its momentary 
effect was great ; but it was a self-contained incident 
and left little permanent influence on the campaign, 
such as that left by the much less decisive defeat on 
the Marne which changed the whole current of the 
war. 

But that it discovered a man of bold, original 

powers among the commonplace, " card-index " 

minds of the Prussian military hierarchy is clear. 

■' Old Hindenburg," as they call him affectionately — 

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General von Hindenburg 



Marshal von Hindenburg 

he is not old as generalship in this war goes, being only 
sixty-seven — belongs to that type which in normal 
times is dismissed by conventional official minds as a 
man ridden by his ideas and in times of stress is 
found to be a genius. The special subject of his sup- 
posed extravagance was the Masurian lakes. About 
the military meaning of this marshy region there were 
two views in Germany. The popular view was that, 
in the event of war, the Russians must not be per- 
mitted to reach this region. The heterodox view was 
that of Hindenburg who maintained that the Russians 
must be forced into the Masurian lakes. To this view 
he clung with an obstinacy that made him something 
of a " character," and when he heard that the Reich- 
stag was about to consider a scheme for draining his 
beloved marshes and bringing the land under cultiva- 
tion, he descended like a whirlwind on deputies and 
party leaders and committees, and when all this failed 
carried his cause to the Kaiser himself. There he pre- 
vailed. The marshes were saved and " old Hinden- 
burg " went on with his study of the region and every 
year at manoeuvres punctually drove the " Russian " 
enemy into the swamps. " To-day we shall have a 
bath " was the proverbial saying of the soldiers when 
old Hindenburg was against them. " They knew that 
everything they could do was unavailing/' says a 
German military student of Hindenburg's career. 
" If they attacked from the left, or from the right, if 
they made a frontal attack, or if they chased the enemy 
from the rear, if they were few or many, the end was 
always the same, Hindenburg entangled them hope- 
lessly among the Masurian lakes. When the signal to 
break off the manoeuvres was heard, the red army was 
invariably standing up to its neck in water." 

But when the war came Hindenburg was in retire- 
ment at Hanover and forgotten. Indeed, it was 

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rumoured that he was in disfavour with the Kaiser for 
having had the discourtesy to manoeuvre even the 
Supreme War Lord into the Masurian swamps. That 
is doubtless a fable; but it is difficult to understand 
why he was not sent at the beginning to conduct the 
campaign on the ground of whose military meaning he 
had made a life-long study. Weeks passed and 
his offer of service was ignored, and meantime the 
Russians were overrunning East Prussia. Then the 
boycott collapsed. '* Suddenly," to use his own words, 
" there came a telegram informing me that the 
Emperor commissioned me to command the Eastern 
army. I really only had time to buy some woollen 
underclothing and to make my old uniform present- 
able again. Then came sleeping cars, saloon cars, 
locomotives — and so I journeyed to East Prussia 
like a prince. And so far everything has gone jolly 
well." 

For he is a garrulous old boy. Perhaps it was that 
quality that made him distrusted, for there is a pre- 
judice in favour of the silent man, who, after all, may 
only be silent because he is dull. Hindenburg is neither 
silent nor dull. He has something of the torrential 
gaiety and physical enjoyment of his job that charac- 
terises Lord Fisher, and he accepts the hero-worship of 
Germany with the unconcealed delight of a hungry 
boy who finds himself suddenly at the table of the 
Carlton or the Ritz. And he has humour. " Some- 
body," he says, " recently wrote to tell me that I 
should keep marching along the bank of a certain 
river — straight on to Petersburg. It isn't a bad idea 
and if the Russians would promise to keep on the other 
bank perhaps I would do it." He takes all the advice, 
and foot-warmers, and dignities that are showered on 
him cheerfully, but he is weary of receiving remedies 
for gall-stones. " Those gall-stones," he says, " are the 
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Marshal von Hindenburg 

plague of my life. Not a day passes without my 
getting sovereign remedies for them sent to me, where- 
as I never suffered from them in my life." 

His failure to reach Warsaw has dimmed his lustre, 
for in war it is the positive achievements alone which 
command popular applause. But it is probable that 
in military history Hindenburg's campaign in Poland 
will rank as a very considerable experiment in strategy. 
The first feint against the Vistula, followed by the 
apparent forced withdrawal to Silesia, and from thence 
the sudden descent upon Central Poland, was an heroic 
conception, and though it failed in its positive object it 
succeeded in a negative purpose not less important. 
It changed the theatre of war and destroyed the 
menace to Cracow, and with it the threatened occupa- 
tion of the great province of Silesia, from which the 
resources of the enemy are largely drawn. In scope 
and execution it is the biggest thing the enemy has 
done in the field, and if it has failed in its main object 
it is because Germany has undertaken a task which 
broke Napoleon, and undertaken it, as it were, with 
one hand. Hindenburg is not a Napoleon ; but he is 
a very able general, and so long as he is in the field we 
must look for bold and imaginative strategy. 

He will not save Germany any more than the 
superlative genius of Lee could save the Confederate 
cause ; but he does redeem German generalship from 
the second-rateness that is its prevailing characteristic. 
Von Moltke, who was apparently never more than the 
shadow of a great name, has fallen: von Kluck has 
not rehabilitated himself since, in swerving from his 
path to Paris, he made his fatal march across the 
English front; von Hausen has been under a cloud 
since the same now distant occasion; the Crown 
Prince has become a jest ; the Crown Prince of Bavaria 
has only distinguished himself by a very foolish and 

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unsoldierly attack on England; and the Kaiser's 
intervention has been attended with unvarying failure. 

The Supreme War Lord, indeed, would seem to 
have been the supreme blunderer. It was he who is 
generally believed to have been responsible for the 
failure of the attack on Calais which has been the 
crowning disaster to Germany. The strategists have 
unanimously condemned the squandering of that 
attack in four separate theatres — Arras, Armentieres, 
Ypres, and the coast. The efforts were not all of the 
magnitude of that at Ypres, but they were none of 
them feints, and the lack of concentration is generally 
accepted as the true cause of that colossal and irrevoc- 
able failure. 

If Bismarck could revisit the field of battle, what 
apoplectic wrath would fill the old man at the 
spectacle that German generalship presents to-da3^. 
What letters he would write to his wife. What brutal 
things he would say about the Supreme War Lord. 
But I think he would have a respectful word for 
" Old Hindenburg." 



196 







Lord Fisher 



LORD FISHER 

AND THE SPIRIT OF THE NAVY 

There is, I believe, a letter in existence written by 
Lord (then Sir John) Fisher in 1905, which may go 
down to history as one of the most remarkable fore- 
casts on record. It contained two prophecies, both 
of which have been fulfilled to the letter. They were 
these: There would be war with Germany in 1914 
and Captain Jellicoe would be the Admiralissimo. 
On the face of it, the prophecy looks like witchcraft. 
In fact, it is simply an illuminating illustration of 
the mind and character of the remarkable man who 
revolutionised the British Navy, came out of his 
retirement to control the instrument that he created, 
and has now returned to that retirement as the result 
of his conflict with Mr. Churchill. If we unravel the 
meaning of the prophecy we shall have gone far to 
unravel the man himself. 

Let it be observed that the year in which the 
letter was written was 1905. That was the year in 
which Lord Fisher forged his bolt; it was the year 
of the Dreadnought. The creation of that ship was 
perhaps the greatest event in the naval history of the 
world, and it was the occasion of the fiercest contro- 
versy that ever raged in the British Navy. It was 
the culminating challenge of " Radical Jack " to the 
traditions of the service. Fifty years had passed 
since young Fisher had left the Victory in Portsmouth 
Harbour and boarded the Calcutta in Plymouth Sound. 
(You may see the figurehead of the old Calcutta to- 
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The War Lords 

day in the grounds of his son's house near Thetford 
in Norfolk.) 

During all that period he had made his way with 
extraordinary independence of mind and directness 
of aim through the obstacles that lay in the path of 
one who had no social backing and no conventional 
arts. He respected nothing that was old because it 
was old, and feared nothing that was powerful 
because it was powerful. He was born with the 
instinct of the revolutionist, and in any sphere of 
life would have been the centre of upheaval. " The 
history of the Navy," he would say, " is the history 
of exploded axioms." He saw that the wonderful 
achievements of science since the days of Nelson had 
changed all the essentials of naval warfare, and with 
that fearless pursuit of the argument " whithersoe'r 
it leads," which is his characteristic, he set himself 
to the task of reform, reckless of personal conse- 
quences. 

His natural audacity of mind is accompanied by 
a touch of romance and superstition not uncommon 
among seafaring men. This sentiment centres round 
the name of Nelson. His passion for Nelson is so 
intense and abiding that he seems to dwell in a sort 
of spiritual companionship with that great man, his 
sayings always on his lips, his ideals always in his 
mind. One of his objections to the first unsupported 
naval attack on the Dardanelles was expressed in 
Nelson's maxim, " Never fight a fort." It was of 
good omen to him that he was initiated into the 
navy by the last of Nelson's captains, and that he 
began his active life on Nelson's Victory and finished 
it on Nelson's Victory, and when he became First Sea 
Lord he deliberately delayed the assumption of office 
till the anniversary of Nelson's death. 

He sees the finger of destiny moving through all 
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Lord Fisher 

the affairs of life, and with uplifted hand and pro- 
digious conviction loves to quote : 

" Time, and the ocean, and some fostering star 
In high cabal have made us what we are." 

I know nothing of his religious views, and fancy that 
even here he would say, " Ditto to Nelson," but few 
men quote the Bible more frequently or more appo- 
sitely, and his love of sermons is notorious. He sees a 
divine purpose in the events that have made this little 
island the great adventurer of the earth, peopling its 
solitary places and holding the keys of its gates. 
" Has it occurred to you," he will say, " that there 
are five keys to the world, the Straits of Dover, the 
Straits of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Cape of 
Good Hope, the Straits of Malacca, and that we hold 
them all ? " 

This mystical fervour, so far from paralysing action, 
stimulates his mind and gives it momentum and 
imaginative sweep. It releases him from the ordinary 
modes of thought and professional ruts, and endows 
him with the quality of the discoverer and adventurer 
into strange seas. The opposition to such a man in 
any walk of life is always great. In the Navy, which 
had grown stiff with tradition, the apparition of this 
volcanic man was especially disquieting. He was a 
menace to vested interests and comfortable ways, a 
challenger of everything that was ancient and there- 
fore sacred, a violent and original force bursting into 
the sleepy parlours of officialism. It was Lord Ripon 
who, on the Olympus of the Admiralty, first heard 
rumours of " Radical Jack," and, perhaps attracted 
by the name, perhaps by the fact that he had written 
on the science of gunnery, summoned him to White- 
hall and made him Controller of the Ordnance Depart- 
ment. That was the beginning of the trouble for the 

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Mandarins of the Navy. Captain Fisher had got his 
foot in the door, and he was not the sort of man to go 
away because the people inside did not want him. 
Nor was his the sort of personality that could ever be 
under-rated by a Government that appreciated energy 
and originality. He returned, it is true, to sea to 
command the Atlantic Fleet, and later the Mediter- 
ranean Fleet; but in due course he was back again 
at Whitehall, this time as Second Sea Lord. And now 
the battle between the rebel and the old school was 
seriously begun. Once it seemed that the Mandarins 
had triumphed. Admiral Fisher retired from the 
Board and took his last post in the active service as 
Commander at Portsmouth. Partly he went there 
for the spiritual joy of seeing his own flag float over 
Nelson's ship, partly as a diplomatic retreat, pour 
mieux sauter. In any case, he was soon back at the 
Board, but this time on his own terms as First Sea 
Lord. He came with the accumulated demands of a 
lifetime, with a will of iron, with a ruthless disregard 
of persons and interests, with the spirit of a crusader 
breathing fire and slaughter against the old dispensa- 
tion. Never was a comfortable government depart- 
ment swept by such a mighty wind. The attack was 
so impetuous, so shattering, that the enemy could not 
mobilise for their defence. For the assailant did not 
believe in attacking the foe piecemeal and so giving 
them time to collect their forces. He descended on 
them in one tumultuous and breathless assault. In 
two or three sensational years he had re-created the 
Navy. He changed the strategic disposition of the 
fleet, scrapped a hundred and fifty useless ships and 
released their men for effective service, abolished the 
infamous waste in warehousing, reformed the con- 
ditions of the men, opened the path for talent, 
gathered around him the men of brains, and bustled 
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Lord Fisher 

away the dullards and the social pets, and finally 
brought to birth the all-big-gun ship. 

And that fact brings me back to the prophecy. 
Why, assuming that Sir John Fisher was right in 
believing that war with Germany was coming — and 
it is the business of the head of the Navy to believe 
that war is coming somewhere at some time in order to 
be prepared for it should it come — why did he in 
1905 predict that it would come nine years later? 
The reason is not really abstruse, but it shows the 
far-seeing character of the man and the imaginative 
quality of his naval policy. In those exciting years 
of revolution in Whitehall Sir John Fisher, while 
fighting the ancien regime at home, had his eye on 
another and more dangerous foe abroad. Behind the 
duel at the Admiralty was the greater duel with 
Admiral von Tirpitz. It was the advent of Germany 
into the realm of sea power that was the true seed of 
the rivalry between the two countries. Sir John 
Fisher saw that if the challenge to the British Navy 
came anywhere it must come in the North Sea. That 
was why, following the maxim of Nelson — " Your 
drill ground must be your battle ground " — he changed 
the drill ground of the Navy from the Mediter- 
ranean to the North Sea. That was why he watched 
every move of the creator of the German Navy 
with such sleepless eyes. Most of all he watched 
the progress of the Kiel Canal, which was nearing 
completion. He saw in that great undertaking the 
keystone of the naval power of Germany, and he 
determined to neutralise it. Perhaps the building of 
the all-big-gun ship was an inevitable consequence 
of the developments of science, especially of the inven- 
tion of central fire-control. I do not think that Lord 
Fisher would claim more than that he was the first 
to bring the factors together — to add up the sum of 
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things, as it were, and to find that the answer was the 
Dreadnought. But in arriving at that answer he had 
his mind fixed, not only on the creation of a superior 
type of ship, but on the creation of a ship that would 
put the Kiel Canal, as it were, out of action for an 
indefinite period. The Dreadnought, in short, was 
not merely intended to make the German Navy a back- 
number; much more it was intended to render the 
Kiel Canal practically useless for supreme naval 
purposes. Hence the secrecy and the furious haste 
with which, the opposition in Whitehall being finally 
overcome, the Dreadnought was built and launched 
on an astonished world. It was a trial ship, an 
experiment, rushed together in order to learn how 
to build an all-big-gun ship; but it hit von Tirpitz 
between wind and water. For a time he was paralysed. 
If he built pre-Dreadnoughts he might find that they 
were no match for the new type of ship; if he built 
the new type, Germany would have to reconstruct the 
Kiel Canal in order to give them passage. Sir John 
Fisher, watching the effect of his trump card, knew 
what the result must be — knew that there was no 
answer to the Dreadnought, except the Dreadnought, 
knew that von Tirpitz had lost initiative until the 
Kiel Canal could be reconstructed. How long would 
that reconstruction take ? It could not be done before 
1 914. Then Germany could not risk a naval war 
until 1914. 

Nor is the basis of the other prophecy less illuminat- 
ing. The opposition that the revolutionist encoun- 
tered at the Admiralty was not only due to the fact 
that he was no respecter of conventional ways ; it was 
due even more to the fact that he was no respecter of 
persons. He was merciless with the incompetent, no 
matter how powerful their social connections might 
be, no matter how clear their claim to advancement 
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Lord Fisher 

on the ground of routine. He applied the doctrine of 
" Favouritism " — favouritism not for persons, but for 
capacity — with a defiant candour that sent a shudder 
through the service. Whenever he saw capacity he 
seized on it, whenever he saw incapacity he brushed 
it aside. Did those upon whom the swift lightnings 
of his wrath fell demand a court-martial ? No. What 
was a court-martial but a means of getting old friends 
to whitewash you and to say that nothing was wrong 
when perhaps they knew that everything was wrong ? 
If a man had shown that he could not be trusted there 
was nothing to do but not to trust him. Personal 
considerations could not be allowed to imperil the 
national safety. Never since the days when Napoleon 
made the sons of inn-keepers and coopers Field- 
Marshals of France was there such a clear field for the 
man of original genius. And among the young men of 
genius whom Sir John Fisher had singled out there 
was none of more conspicuous promise than Captain 
JeUicoe. He had discovered him when he himself was 
Controller of Ordnance, and when he returned to the 
Admiralty as First Sea Lord he brought Captain 
JeUicoe to his old department. It was not his " turn " ; 
but what of that? If it was not his " turn " he must 
be taken out of his turn. There was no time to be lost. 
Nine years hence the Kiel Canal would be finished. 
Nine years hence the fate of England might hang upon 
one man. He was satisfied that that man must be 
Jellicoe . Those who in the interval have followed events 
in the Navy closely know how the fulfilment of the 
prophecy has been brought about. Perhaps only the 
courage of a Churchill could have carried through the 
rapid shufflings of men and officers necessary to accom- 
plish the object. It was accomplished at the last 
moment. As the hour struck Jellicoe appeared as the 
Admiralissimo of the Fleet. 

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It is not improbable that there was another prophecy 
that Sir John Fisher could have made in 1905 had 
he been probed. He knew that when the war came 
about it would, in spite of his age, be he who would 
have to control the great machine that he had created. 
The call was delayed, but few doubted that it would 
have to come. And, equally, few contrasting the 
events of the first three months of the war with 
what happened after his return will under-estimate 
the immense importance of his recall upon the 
course of the war. There had been grave mistakes 
which had led to grave disasters. The sinking of the 
three cruisers by a submarine, the defeat off the coast 
of Chili, the long licence accorded to the Emden, the 
escape of the Goeben, had disturbed the public mind. 
There was no doubt about the instrument, but there 
was disquiet about the way in which it was being 
used. Then came Lord Fisher and the release of his 
greyhounds. " What is the use of setting a tortoise 
to catch a hare? What did the Almighty give the 
greyhound long legs for? " he said with that whimsi- 
cal fancy in which he loves to dress his thought. 
Within a month the battle of the Falkland Islands 
had swept the German Navy from the seas, and 
had established in the popular mind, as nothing else 
had done, the overwhelming supremacy of the 
British Fleet. The failure of Germany on land had 
been only relative : her failure at sea had been abso- 
lute. There had been a disposition in the public 
mind until then to overlook the magnitude of that 
failure. This was very natural. We are impressed by 
visible results and ignore the much more important 
invisible results. The achievements of the Emden 
had that dramatic quality which arrests the popular 
mind and had assumed an importance which had no 
relation to realities. They made exciting reading in 
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Lord Fisher 

the newspapers, and gave people who do not think 
an easy subject for their fears about the Navy. 

And all the time one of the most wonderful things 
in history was happening with hardly a word of com- 
ment in the Press or of remark from the public. The 
whole mercantile marine of Germany was vanishing 
from the seas. There is to-day on all the waters of 
the earth not a trading ship to be seen carrying the 
German or Austrian flag. The shipping industry of 
Germany is dead. Its vessels have either been cap- 
tured and sold, or interned in foreign ports, or lie 
useless hulks in the harbours of Hamburg and 
Bremen. Still more wonderful, millions of British 
soldiers have been carried to and fro across the 
English Channel without the loss of a single life. The 
North Sea is almost as inviolate as the Serpentine. 
Ten months have passed and not a German soldier 
has landed on our shores. The spectacular raid to 
Yarmouth and the futile raid on Scarborough and 
Hartlepool only served to show the inability of the 
German fleet to make a real offensive stroke against 
this country. 

These invisible victories of the Fleet are the realities 
of warfare. They are destroying Germany without a 
shot being fired. " You take my life," said Shylock, 
" when you do take the means whereby I live." And 
it is the means whereby she lives that the British 
Navy is taking from Germany. For an example, take 
rubber. It is an essential in modern warfare and the 
Navy has taken it from her. The price of rubber 
to-day in London is about 2s. a lb.; in Hamburg, I 
understand, it is 18s. Or oil. The Navy has just taken 
Basra in the Persian Gulf from the Turks. The man 
in the street has not remarked the fact. Yet Basra is 
the port for the Persian oilfield. Its capture means 
that while Germany is without supplies of oil we are 
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assured of an abundant supply from the Persian 
oilfields of which the British Government is the 
principal owner. 

Meanwhile the German Grand Fleet lies idle in its 
harbours. Twice it has stolen out like a burglar at 
night and fled back with the dawn at the first hint of 
the arrival of the policeman. Once it was badly 
mauled and since then it has been " silent as a painted 
ship upon a painted ocean." It is not for us to com- 
plain if von Tirpitz yields us the fruits of victory with- 
out asking us for the sacrifices of victory. But it is not 
difficult to conceive the profound disappointment of 
Germany at his failure to challenge our supremacy at 
sea. The German navy was the peculiar pride of the 
Kaiser. As Frederick the Great had taught Prussia 
to march, so the Kaiser's ambition was to teach it to 
swim. And at the end of eight months of war there is 
not a square mile of the high seas where the German 
Fleet has dared to sail free and defiant. 

This is the great, outstanding fact of the struggle. 
The German war machine on land has come to grief, 
but it is still formidable. The German war machine at 
sea is locked up in an ignoble fear. It may be that the 
war came too suddenly for von Tirpitz to carry out 
his strategy. There is reason to believe that the war 
lords forced the pace without regard to the interests 
of the Navy, and that von Tirpitz was sacrificed to the 
need of rushing events on land. It is an interesting 
matter for speculation as to what would have happened 
if the German Admiralissimo, instead of keeping his 
great fleet intact, had distributed a considerable 
portion of it over the oceans of the world before the 
outbreak of war for the purpose of commerce destruc- 
tion. It would have meant of course heavy losses to 
the German navy ; but it could hardly have failed to 
produce important material results and hardly less 
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Lord Fisher 

important moral results. It would have been a 
serious challenge in the eyes of the world to our 
mastery of the seas, it would have gravely interfered 
for a time with our overseas trade, and it would cer- 
tainly have given the Germans a run for their money. 
The ships would have been rounded up in the end ; but 
the interruption they would have caused to our trade 
would have been serious, and the anxiety felt about 
the trivial episodes of the Emden show how severe a 
blow such an aggressive policy would have struck at 
our confidence. 

The timid policy adopted by von Tirpitz, whether 
it was his choice or whether it was thrust on him by 
the rapid movement of events, has been a disastrous 
failure. His fleet is in being — and in hiding — but the 
seas are ours. The policy of " attrition " is wrong for 
the weaker Power. Any chess player will understand 
that. It is the player who has the superiority in 
" pieces " who can best afford to play the game of 
attrition. What has been the result of that game so 
far ? The British navy has not only had all the fruits 
of victory, but it is to-day in a relatively stronger 
position than it was on the day that war was declared 
owing to the enormously superior power of this 
country in regard to building. We, in a word, both eat 
the cake and have it. 

But the failure of German tactics, after all, is only 
a tribute to British supremacy. For a dozen years 
two men have been measuring themselves against 
each other at sea and the war has brought their 
relative genius to the test. In all this vast conflict 
there is only one real personal wrestle. It is that 
between Lord Fisher and von Tirpitz. They have 
watched each other's moves for years, the one grimly 
and studiously, after the Prussian manner, the other 
with sardonic gaiety after a manner for which I know 
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no parallel. Von Tirpitz has failed, not only because 
he had the harder task, but because he has a heavier, 
more mechanical mind. His evolutions are enclosed 
by the large sweep and range of the other's imagina- 
tion. Von Tirpitz is governed by the thing that is dis- 
covered: Fisher is the discoverer, the man of free, 
adventurous mind, the great empiric of the sea. He 
saw that naval thought was sterilised by traditions of 
the past which had no relevance to new facts and, 
having no respect for authority, he made, as we have 
seen, a revolution. In that revolution von Tirpitz 
was always panting in his wake — an industrious, 
painstaking man trying to catch the lightnings. 
The two illustrated in a very striking way the char- 
acteristics of the rival nations, the imaginative swift- 
ness of the one, the pedestrian thoroughness of the 
other. In the intellectual contests at the Mermaid 
Tavern it was said that the quick mind of Shakespeare 
played around the ponderous Ben Jonson like an 
English frigate around a Spanish galleon. That 
analogy might be applied to the intellectual relations 
of England and Germany. I remember standing in 
the museum of engineering at Munich before a 
Bessemer plant. " There," said the German who was 
showing me round, " there is one of the inventions 
we owe to you. Your people have the imagination to 
discover; but we have the patience to perfect and 
apply." In the contest between Lord Fisher and von 
Tirpitz, the Englishman not only had the superior 
imagination but at least an equal quality of industrious 
application of means to ends. That deadly blow at the 
Kiel Canal which he struck by inventing the Dread- 
nought did not end with the complete dislocation of 
von Tirpitz's plans. Its effects went deeper than that. 
They permanently lowered the quality of the German 
competition in shipbuilding. For a year von Tirpitz, 
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Lord Fisher 

paralysed by the new turn of events, stopped all big- 
ship construction, and when in feverish haste he laid 
down eight Dreadnoughts he laid them down from 
plans for which Germany had paid a great sum, 
but which Lord Fisher would doubtless have been 
glad to give to von Tirpitz for nothing, for they were 
already obsolete. 

It was this break with the past, carried out so 
swiftly and silently, that gave the British navy such an 
overwhelming advantage, not so much in the number 
of Dreadnoughts as in their quality, for while Germany 
was laying down large numbers of ships on an inferior 
model, we were able to correct the discovered defects 
of each ship in its successor. 

As to the wisdom of the change, there was no doubt 
after the battle off the Falkland Islands. The great 
principles which Lord Fisher applied in the Dread- 
nought were the uniformity of calibre in the guns, 
and the union of striking power and high speed. The 
latter principle has been perhaps the most important 
of his many contributions to the philosophy of naval 
warfare. In the old days the cruiser was the vision of 
the navy, but not its striking power. The battleship 
had power but not speed. Lord Fisher saw that to 
unite the two elements in one ship would much more 
than double its value, and I think I am revealing no 
secret in saying that he himself would have built 
nothing but Dreadnought cruisers. But he had to 
yield something to the powerful opponents who stood 
for the old traditions and warred against the ravages 
of his formidable broom. And so we had the Dread- 
nought battleship, the single calibre ship with an 
inferior speed but heavier armour, and the Dread- 
nought cruiser, the single calibre ship with the 
maximum speed. It will be found, I think, that the 
battle off the Falkland Islands bears testimony to the 
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The War Lords 

wisdom of the battle cruiser which can not only throw 
the heaviest projectile the farthest distance but has 
the speed of the greyhound. It will show also, I 
think, the far-seeing strategy which came back to 
the Admiralty when Lord Fisher resumed the control 
of the great instrument that he forged during the 
sensational years when he was First Sea Lord. 

There was one man, we may be sure, who saw the 
announcement of Lord Fisher's return to the Ad- 
miralty with a sad heart and, later, the news of his re- 
tirement with satisfaction. It was Admiral von Tirpitz. 
Perhaps it ought to have been apparent from the 
beginning that the Admiralty could not accom- 
modate two such masterful personalities as Mr. 
Churchill and Lord Fisher. Neither of them has the 
gift of subordinating himself, and though in time of 
peace it might be possible for them to observe the 
true limits of their authority, there was little likeli- 
hood of that being the case in time of war, when the 
political and strategic motives were inevitably com- 
plicated. The collision came with the proposal to 
attack the Dardanelles. Here the political and 
military motives were brought into sharp conflict. 
The value of a successful attack on the Dardanelles 
and the fall of^ Constantinople was obvious. It 
would have far-reaching influence in the Balkans, 
it would release the commerce of the Black Sea, it 
would greatly strengthen the arm of Russia, and its 
moral effect on Germany would be incalculable. On 
the other hand, of course, its failure would be a 
disaster to the Allies of the gravest character. Lord 
Fisher and Mr. Churchill approached the problem 
from entirely opposite convictions. The one would 
have no political complications with the operations 
of the Navy. Germany was to be beaten in the North 
Sea or nowhere, and any weakening of power in the 
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Lord Fisher 

supreme theatre of action was inadmissible on any 
political calculation. In any case an unsupported 
naval attack on the Dardanelles was impracticable. 
To be effective the way must be cleared by land 
operations. The objections were over-ruled. Mr. 
Churchill, with whom Mr. Balfour as a member of 
the War Council was working at the Admiralty, 
carried the decision. No doubt his case was 
strengthened by the confident assurance that Greece 
would join the Allies and render valuable aid in the 
attack. But at the critical moment M. Venizelos 
fell, and the adventure was launched on a purely 
naval basis. The result was disaster. The defences 
of the Dardanelles were found to be impenetrable by 
sea, and the disaster of March 18th ended the first 
phase of the operations. But the attack once begun 
could not be abandoned without serious political con- 
sequences, and the second phase was entered on on a 
dual basis, the initiative being taken by land and the 
navy only acting as support. The difference at the 
Admiralty, however, was not removed, and it re- 
appeared in an aggravated form in relation to the 
use of the navy in the Straits. Finally, Lord Fisher 
tendered his resignation. The incident coincided 
with the " shell " episode, and Mr. Asquith resolved 
on the reconstruction of the Cabinet. The original 
conception of the new Ministry left Mr. Churchill un- 
provided with office and placed Mr. Balfour at the 
Admiralty; but in a few hours, through the inter- 
vention of Mr. Balfour himself, room was made for 
the return of Mr. Churchill as Chancellor of the 
Duchy. Lord Fisher, however, insisted on the 
elimination of Mr. Churchill as the condition of the 
withdrawal of his resignation, and as that condition 
was not fulfilled he disappeared. Mr. Churchill had 
won. Lord Fisher had gone, and the only change in 

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the political control of the navy was that instead of 
Mr. Churchill being at the Admiralty with Mr. Balfour 
as his assistant, Mr. Balfour was at the Admiralty 
with Mr. Churchill as a colleague in the cabinet. 
There had been a shuffle of places, but nothing more. 
It was an unhappy close to the most remarkable 
naval career since Nelson fell at Trafalgar. But the 
work Lord Fisher had done remained, and though the 
instrument on which the security of the country 
depended had passed out of his hand it was still the 
instrument of his creation. 



THE 
CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 

The failure of the Crown Prince is among the few 
gratifying personal episodes of the war. It is gratify- 
ing because the more the House of Hohenzollern is 
discredited the more hope there will be of the libera- 
tion of Germany in the future from the evil influence 
that has made her the outlaw of the human race. 
It is gratifying also because the Crown Prince played 
a leading part -in the military conspiracy that led to 
the war. His relations with his father had been 
notoriously bad. For a period long anterior to the 
tragedy he had openly allied himself with the military 
extremists, and there is a widespread and well- 
informed opinion that it was the fear of his son that 
was largely responsible for the marked change which 
was apparent in the attitude of the Kaiser in August 
1 913 — a change commented on in the memorable 
despatch of M. Jean Cambon, the French Ambassador 
in Berlin. The unpopularity of the Kaiser with the 
military party had long been a familiar topic in 
German society. It was believed that he would 
never be coerced into making the plunge, and he was 
openly accused of cowardice. In the Crown Prince 
was found an easy tool with which to bring the 
Kaiser to heel. The alliance of the heir apparent with 
the war party became an open menace to the authority 
of the Kaiser. He saw his popularity with the 
dominant caste usurped by his son, and even his 
prestige with the people imperilled by the same 
challenge. 

That challenge became apparent not only to 
Germany but to the whole world through the Crown 

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The War Lords 

Prince's defiant action in connection with the 
notorious Zabern episode. That episode was the most 
flagrant example there had been of the military 
tyranny under which the German civilian existed. 
For some fancied affront to a young lieutenant on 
the part of certain youthful citizens, the military 
were allowed to run amok among the populace, to 
beat old men with the sword and imprison distin- 
guished citizens. The outrage was too much even 
for the servile spirit of the German people, long 
inured to the insolence of the German officer, and 
as the result of the scenes in the Reichstag the 
Kaiser, throwing over the Chancellor, publicly rebuked 
Colonel von Reuter, who had been the head and 
front of the offending. But while he was making 
peace his son leapt into the quarrel on the other side 
and sent a telegram conveying his " Bravos " to the 
officer whom his father had sacrificed to the public 
indignation. 

This escapade was, next to the earlier Reichstag 
episode, quite the most significant incident in a 
career which had provided Germany with abundant 
gossip and speculation for half a dozen years. It was 
significant, first, because the Crown Prince was no 
ionger a boy. He was a man of thirty-three. But it 
was significant chiefly because it defined more clearly 
than anything that had gone before his attitude on the 
relations of the civil and military powers in Germany. 
When the Crown Prince wired his " Bravos " to the 
grotesque von Reuter, rattling his sword in the 
market-place of Zabern, he not only openly re- 
pudiated his father but proclaimed to Germany that 
the heir to the throne threw in his lot with the mailed 
fist against the people. 

This fact was much more important than " the 
enchanting smile " about which so much was said in 
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The Crown Prince 

the popular descriptions of the Crown Prince. He 
certainly had that. His bright, debonair carriage 
gave him an easy path to popular homage. The people 
liked this youthful figure, straight and slim, with the 
fair hair and blue eyes of the Saxon and the vivacious 
manner of one who was intoxicated with the wine of 
life. It was not difficult to believe the stories that were 
told of his good nature, of the " lifts " he gave to 
workmen in his motor-car, of his passion for his 
abundant children, of his enthusiasm for pretty faces, 
of his love of dancing and music-halls, of his wild 
night excursions from Danzig to Berlin to see some 
favourite of the stage, and all the rest of the small 
legends with which the industrious journalist appeals 
to the popular taste for gossip about the stars who 
dwell apart from our humble lives. A little penetra- 
tion would have discovered that this youthful and 
dashing exuberance was only the glitter of a shallow 
and irresponsible character, whose career might very 
conceivably be a mere Rake's Progress. The air of 
high spirits, pleasant in the boy, became mere levity 
in the man, and on the two most recent of his official 
visits to this country — the latest, and surely the last, 
the coronation of King George — his bearing was the 
subject of comment. I recall especially his manner 
during the long ceremony in Westminster Abbey. It 
would have been excusable in a restless boy, but in a 
man of his age and position it gave the impression 
of an unschooled arrogance. But the Germans are 
accustomed to arrogance in their rulers, and it seems 
indisputable that the Crown Prince was popular in 
spite of his notorious frailties. 

It was this personal popularity which used to be 
offered as the explanation of the conflict between the 
Kaiser and his eldest son. When the Crown Prince 
and his wife were sent off on a tour in the East, it was 

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The War Lords 

said that the Kaiser wanted to get rid of a dangerous 
rival in the affections of the people of Berlin. " There 
is only one ruler," he told the citizens of Frankfurt in 
one of his bursts of splendid egoism, " and it is I." 
And he would certainly not tolerate a rival in his 
own household. But we need not suspect the Kaiser 
of a petty jealousy in his treatment of the Crown 
Prince. It is explicable on the ground of a family 
tradition. Kings rarely get on well with their eldest 
sons. The Hohenzollerns have not only dragooned 
their people: they have dragooned their children, 
from the time when old Frederick William clapped 
Frederick the Great in prison onwards. They have 
been martinets in their own family, and the tyranny 
of the martinet usually leads to reprisals. It has 
done so in the present case. Until his son's marriage, 
the Kaiser held him in with the tightest of reins, and 
the lad, curbed and regarded then as rather sullen 
by comparison with his popular brother, Eitel Fritz, 
seemed to give little promise of trouble. But with his 
marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Mecklen- 
burgh-Schwerin he took the bit in his teeth and 
bolted. The union made him at least as rich as his 
father, and with riches he asserted his independence 
of the paternal leading strings. 

Hence the six years' war between the two. In 
theory there is nothing more beautifully simple than 
the management of children. Every experienced 
parent recalls those happy and innocent days when 
he planned out the future development of his off- 
spring — thus and thus would he stimulate, advise, 
encourage them ; thus and thus would they go ; and 
then in due time his own failure would be cancelled 
and his ideal would live in the flesh. If he is wise he 
comes later to the philosophy of the sensible man 
who once said to me, " I have come to the conclusion 
216 



The Crown Prince 

that it is not possible to worry children into being 
what you want them to be, but that it is possible 
to preserve their affection — if you take trouble." It 
is a humble, disillusioned conclusion; but it is a wise 
one. With all his accomplishments, however, the 
Kaiser is not a wise parent, and, never having been 
conspicuous for filial obedience himself, he naturally 
could not tolerate its absence in his own son. For we 
dislike nothing so much as the reflection of our own 
failings in those about us. The Hohenzollerns, in 
short, believe in discipline for everybody except 
themselves. 

Between the martinet father and the insubordinate 
son the feud was open and flagrant. The more the 
Kaiser punished the Crown Prince the more he 
was the same — impulsive, defiant, wayward. He 
was " exiled " with his regiment to Danzig; but 
exile did not suppress him. It was from Danzig that 
he went down to Berlin to make that amazing scene 
in the Reichstag which set all Europe talking. His 
behaviour was an outrage to the Chancellor, but it was 
still more an outrage to the Kaiser, for the Chancellor 
is the personal Minister of his sovereign, and the Crown 
Prince's open repudiation of the policy of Herr 
Bethmann-Hollweg in regard to Morocco was equiva- 
lent to slapping his father's face before the whole 
world. It was said that he was confined as a punish- 
ment on his return to Danzig; but, if so, the lesson 
was as futile as those that had gone before, for the 
" Bravos " to von Reuter bore the same significance 
as the Reichstag episode. Whatever the original 
attitude of the Kaiser was to the incidents at Zabern, 
he had the good sense to make a scapegoat of the 
Chancellor when he saw that the Reichstag would 
stand no nonsense. In these circumstances his son's 
telegrams, though they anticipated his action, could 
217 



The War Lords 

have only one meaning. They were, if not an attack 
on his father, an attempt to dictate his policy for him. 
In considering the bearing of all these and similar 
incidents upon the character of the Crown Prince, it 
was difficult to say how far they represented the de- 
termination of a high-spirited young man to have 
that " place in the sun " which his father denied him, 
and how far they expressed his real sentiments. He 
might be simply kicking over the traces to remind his 
father that he could kick. On the other hand, it is 
to be observed that in the Zabern affair he was kick- 
ing not only his father, but the public, and that is a 
very unusual proceeding for heirs-apparent. It is 
customary for them to pose as the friends of the 
people. In this case the Crown Prince was deliberately 
anti-popular. That is, of course, the traditional 
attitude of the Hohenzollerns. They have governed 
their people with the mailed fist, but when they 
have been wise they have not proclaimed the fact. 
Frederick the Great clothed it under a guise of good- 
natured tolerance. When he was lampooned in the 
public streets, he had the lampoons placed in a more 
conspicuous position. " My people and I have an 
excellent understanding," he said. " They say what 
they like and I do what I like." The Kaiser has not 
the wit of his great ancestor; but he was learning 
something of his discretion. More than once he had 
trimmed his sails to the democratic breeze. He still 
proclaimed the divine right with his old Sinaitic 
authority, but there were evidences that in his heart 
he knew it was false and that there was no resting 
place for a King except upon the sanction of his 
people. Again and again he bowed to the storm — 
over the Bulow budget, over the famous Telegraph 
interview, over Zabern. In each case the action of the 
Reichstag as the mouthpiece of the people had been 
218 



The Crown Prince 

accepted as the sovereign authority of the State. The 
Kaiser, in a word, seemed to be coming down, 
cautiously, undemonstratively, but irrevocably, from 
the old absolutist position. There was a noticeable 
decline during the years immediately preceding the 
war in those aggressive hectorings that he had been 
accustomed to address to his people, and on one recent 
occasion he had even revealed to the world, through 
Dr. Hintze, an episode in which he appeared — 
mirabile dictu I — as the defender of constitutional 
government. On the day of his accession to the 
throne, he said, he found on his desk a letter written 
by his great-uncle, Frederick William IV., the first 
nominally constitutional ruler of Prussia, which that 
monarch had ordered to be handed to each of his 
successors immediately on his accession until its 
appeal had been complied with. The appeal was this : 
that the new occupant of the Throne should over- 
throw the Constitution before taking the accession 
oath. The Kaiser's father and grandfather had 
ignored the amazing legacy and passed it on. The 
Kaiser did not pass it on. He burned the letter. He 
told Dr. Hintze that he saw the possibility that some 
day, a young King — perhaps his mind strayed to 
Danzig as he spoke — receiving this criminal incite- 
ment, might attempt to act upon it. "I felt as if I 
had a powder barrel in the house and could not rest 
until it was destroyed," he said. 

It is difficult to correlate this incident with the 
arrogant and despotic claims of the Kaiser; but we 
must not look for coherence in such a wayward and 
neurotic personality. He has his moments of illu- 
mination and this was one of them. And with his 
later tendency to accommodate himself to demo- 
cratic sentiment he could hardly fail to be concerned 
about his heir who still dwelt in that fatal Elysium 
219 



The War Lords 

which most doomed monarchs have inhabited — that 
Elysium in which the temporary arrangements of 
men are supposed to have a divine and eternal sanc- 
tion. The exit from that Elysium is usually a painful 
one. In the midst of the French Revolution, Cathe- 
rine II. of Russia wrote to Marie Antoinette at the 
Tuileries a letter in which she said: " Kings ought to 
proceed in their career, undisturbed by the cries of 
the people, as the moon pursues her course unim- 
peded by the howling of dogs." It was a brave senti- 
ment. History soon made its comment on it in 
France, and the Kaiser, who has plenty of intelligence, 
feared that his rather foolish son might provoke the 
same comment in Germany. 

It was not supposed at the time that the Crown 
Prince's insolent conduct in the Reichstag in regard 
to Morocco was directed against England. There was, 
indeed, a popular idea in Germany that this erratic 
young man had too great an enthusiasm for this 
country. The fact was a little unintelligible — as unin- 
telligible, let us say, as the late King Edward's love for 
Republican France — for England, with its free institu- 
tions and its non-militarism, represented everything 
which the Crown Prince might be supposed to detest. 
But the affections of kings like the affections of 
commoners are not governed by politics, and the 
Crown Prince was supposed to have been seduced by 
our games and our customs, our clothes and even by 
ourselves. A serious attack was made on him in a 
section of the German Press, on the ground that, during 
the winter sports in Switzerland, he had not merely 
worn English clothes — which he commonly did — and 
used English terms, but that he had systematically 
cut the society of Germans in order to spend his time 
with English and Americans. He denied this impeach- 
ment afterwards, but he was indisputably fond of 




/ 



[yh-jp 



s# 



c 



From photograph by Stanley's Press Agency. 

The Grown Prince of Prussia 



The Crown Prince 

English country houses and of Americans, and his en- 
thusiasm for British games, from golf to hockey and 
football, was as characteristic of his leanings as the 
intrepidity he showed in India in hunting the elephant 
and the tiger — in regard to which he wrote and pub- 
lished a narrative — and the daring of his exploits in 
the air which he was the first royal prince to invade. 
Love for our games and for the customs of our country 
houses, however, would have been a poor basis on 
which to build confidence in regard to so essentially 
shallow a personality. He liked our games and our 
clothes because that was the measure of his under- 
standing of this country. But beneath that super- 
ficial sympathy he had the Hohenzollern dislike of 
our free institutions and the Hohenzollern contempt 
for any governmental system that did not rest osten- 
tatiously on the sword. His alliance with the mili- 
tarist faction was a great, perhaps the decisive, asset 
of the war party. They had now a pistol to put at the 
head of the Kaiser, and looking at the war in the 
light of the personal conflict, it is not unreasonable to 
see in it the defeat of the Kaiser and the triumph of 
his son. 

But whatever the relations of father and son in 
regard to the catastrophe may have been, they have 
equally suffered humiliation in the field. The one 
thing we know confidently about the Kaiser is, that 
he has been present at nearly every disaster that has 
befallen his army, from Dixmude to Warsaw, and it 
is very confidently held that it was his strategy which 
failed in the attempt to reach Calais last October, a 
failure which may ultimately be regarded as the most 
decisive event of the war. Nor, since the French 
centre gave way before him, has the Crown Prince 
won any distinction in the field. We must accept the 
scandals associated with his name, the plunder of 

221 



The War Lords 

chateaux and the domestic sensations, with caution. 
They may be true, for anything is possible with so 
trivial and light-minded a person, and the allegations 
of the Baroness de Baye as to his alleged depredations 
at her chateau at Champeaubert cannot be wholly 
dismissed. But the atmosphere of war is congenial 
to malicious inventions, and we are all rather too 
easily disposed at these times to believe anything 
which will add a deeper dye to the enemy. But, 
putting aside these things, it is quite clear that the 
Crown Prince has been in a military sense entirely 
negligible. There was a moment, at the time of the 
battle of the Marne, when it seemed that he had the 
fate of Toul at his mercy, but he failed, and since the 
retreat he has suffered complete eclipse. The long 
periods of silence in regard to him have been ex- 
plained in various ways, sometimes by the specific 
statement that he was dead, sometimes by the 
allegation that his father had put him under arrest, 
and so on. That there have been sharp conflicts 
between the two would seem to be undoubted, and 
there is very detailed evidence that he was respon- 
sible for the heavy sacrifice in the capture of Longwy 
— a sacrifice which enraged the Kaiser and is said to 
have led to a painful scene between him and the 
general in command, who defended himself by de- 
claring that " if my soldiers advanced in close forma- 
tion against Longwy and were uselessly massacred it 
was by the orders of your son who, at the safe distance 
of 20 kilometres, kept on sending me the telephonic 
order, ' To the assault, always to the assault.' " 

We get an authentic glimpse of him in Sven Hedin's 
preposterous book. The glimpse is all the more delight- 
ful because the author, inspired by the spirit of 
flunkeyism, is unconscious of the absurdity of the 
scene he describes : 

222 



The Crown Prince 

' ' In the lower hall stood a number of officers in line, and 
opposite them some 20 soldiers formed up in the same way. 
Then came the Crown Prince William, tall, slim, and royally 
straight, dressed in a dazzling white tunic and wearing the 
Iron Cross of the first and second class ; he walked with a firm 
step between the lines of soldiers. An adjutant followed him, 
carrying in a casket a number of Iron Crosses. The Crown 
Prince took one and handed it to the nearest officer. . . . 
Last night the Crown Prince distributed more Iron Crosses 
among the heroes of the day. 

' • Would you like to know what the German Crown Prince, 
the Crown Prince of Prussia, eats for supper? Here is the 
menu — cabbage soup, boiled beef with horse-radish and 
potatoes, wild duck with salad, fruit, wine, and coffee with 
cigars." 

There is the famous explorer's picture of his hero, 
painted in all seriousness and with the reverence of 
the honest flunkey. It is an exquisite scene — the 
" royally straight " young man, with his dazzling 
white tunic and his royally firm step handing out iron 
crosses right and left from a box, and then partaking 
of his beef and greens just as though he were a mere 
mortal. One sees the honest flunkey gazing at the 
sublime spectacle with a sort of speechless admira- 
tion. And later he heard the royally straight young 
man talk of the war, and this is an example of the 
wisdom that fell from his royal lips : "Of the fighting 
men one sees practically nothing, for they are con- 
cealed by the ground and in the trenches, and it is 
rather dangerous to get too close to a bayonet charge 
— unless one's duty takes one there." One does not 
know whether to wonder most at the naivete of the 
Crown Prince or that of the infatuated gentleman who 
solemnly records these flatulent nothings. But they 
serve one purpose. They reveal the Crown Prince 
to us. And the revelation reminds one of Charles II. 's 
remark about Prince George: " I've tried him drunk 
and I've tried him sober, and there's nothing in him 
either way." 

223 



KING NICHOLAS OF 
MONTENEGRO 

In the clash of the great nations, the people of 
Montenegro and their King are forgotten. They 
answered the call to battle with the readiness of the 
most warlike race in Europe — a race that, encircled 
by great foes, has kept its freedom by its own un- 
aided indomitable courage. But in the battle of 
millions its little host is swallowed up as completely 
as the rivulet is lost in the surge of Niagara. And yet, 
in a very real sense, Montenegro represents as truly 
as any the issues of the war. In all the history of 
the making of modern Europe there is no story so 
like an heroic legend as that of the people of the 
Black Mountain. We may see the spirit of that 
people in their King. 

When Lord Newton visited King (then Prince) 
Nicholas of Montenegro at Cettinje in 1892, the talk 
turned on Gladstone. That great man had been the 
hero of the Prince. There was no one like him. It 
was he who had hurled the lightnings of his speech 
against the Turk ; it was he who, in 1880, had estab- 
lished in the face of Austria Montenegro's claim to 
Dulcigno and secured the little mountain kingdom 
its seaboard. Now, however, his confidence in Glad- 
stone was gone. He was not the mighty ruler he had 
believed him to be. He was a fallen and shattered 
idol. What was the meaning of the change? Lord 
Newton found that it was all because of " Jack-the- 
Ripper." " Why hasn't Gladstone caught the 
villain? " asked the Prince. What palsy had fallen 
224 



King Nicholas of Montenegro 

upon that mighty arm that it could not slay a mere 
assassin? And he shook his head sadly over the 
eclipse of so much splendour. 

The incident tells us a good deal about the King 
and his kingdom. Nicholas is the most primitive 
sovereign in Europe. He is like a figure out of the 
" Book of Kings " — a living memory of the antique 
world that has become a legend. He is the patriarch 
of a shepherd people, less numerous than the in- 
habitants of Bradford or Nottingham, living scattered 
among the mountain fastnesses of a country half the 
size of Wales. He rules them not as a king, but as 
the father of a family or the head of a tribe, giving 
them laws and songs and dealing out to them justice 
like an Oriental cadi. In spite of his early education 
in Trieste and Paris, the modern movement has never 
touched him. He remains a peasant among peasants. 
Pork and plum brandy furnish his table, and if he 
is alone he is indifferent about a tablecloth. He often 
sleeps in his boots, and when he rides about on his 
donkey with his fur cap on his head and his feet and 
legs swathed in rough cloth, he is indistinguishable 
from the least of his subjects. His palace at Cettinje 
is a modest two-storied house, only distinguished from 
the houses around it by a flagstaff and a sentinel at 
the door. Cettinje itself is less a town than a village 
perched among the mountains — a village with two or 
three taverns, a chemist's shop, a photographer or 
two, a saddle-maker, and a sufficiency of tailors. 

In all this archaic simplicity he is the true expres- 
sion of his people. There is nothing in Europe com- 
parable to this little clan of mountaineers. The Swiss 
have long since been tamed by the tourist into the 
ways of civilisation and the commonplace. William 
Tell has become an idle tale. Centuries have passed 
since the Welshmen used to sweep down from their 
225 H 



The War Lords 

crags and lay waste the outposts of the hated Saxon. 
They have found more profitable ways with the 
Saxon than raiding his castles. They have sent a 
dictator to tax him and manage his affairs. But here 
in the mountains the dark ages still linger. Outside 
the enemy still prowls around. All the memories, 
legends, and songs of the people centre in their un- 
dying conflict with the Turk. That little band of 
crepe that you see around the cap they wear is a 
symbol of mourning — the most touching symbol 
extant in Europe. In it 370U may see the mourning 
of a nation — 

" a lamentation 
And an ancient tale of wrong." 

It is five hundred years since that tragic day at 
Kossovo when the Serbian Kingdom was destroyed 
by the triumphant Turk, and that black band on the 
cap carries into the twentieth century the bitter 
memory of that day. From the fatal field George 
Balsha fled with his remnant to the Black Mountain, 
and there for five centuries they have been entrenched, 
the embattled shepherds of the hills, wasting and 
being wasted, every man a warrior, counting his 
honours by the Turks he has slain, his sorrows by 
the triumphs of his foe — his life an adventure, his 
very religion charged with the passions of a battle 
that never ends. There is no epic in our modern 
records like it. It had bred a race also unique — a race 
of giants, primitive, almost barbaric, fearless, like 
men to whom the atmosphere of danger is habitual: 
a simple, pastoral people, essentially masculine, be- 
longing to the fourteenth rather than the twentieth 
century. The currents of our feverish modern world 
do not touch them. 
They would not, for example, know what the 
226 



King 



Nicholas of Montenegro 



suffragist movement meant. Women to them are 
what his wife was to Charles XL of Sweden — 
'' Madam, I married you to give me children, not to 
give me advice." They are the toilers in the field — 
the hewers of wood and drawers of water for Man 
the magnificent. The Montenegrin never goes out 
with his wife. The daring husband who showed him- 
self in such company would expose himself to humilia- 
tion and ridicule. If he pass her in the street he will 
avoid a look or a salutation. He himself goes in 
glittering apparel — red waistcoat and gold braid, and 
fine girdle for his pistols, for all are armed. But the 
woman goes sadly in black, veiled. Give her a vote 
— how the mountains would shake with laughter at 
the thought. 

It is to the credit of Nicholas that he stands ahead 
of his people in this regard. He is proud of his 
daughters. " No exports from Montenegro/' he says 
indignantly, "how about my daughters? One is 
married to the King of Italy, two to Russian Grand 
Dukes who could buy up my country and not feel 
any poorer, and the fourth is Queen of Serbia. If 
these are not exports, I don't know what you call 
them." And he is proud, too, of the Montenegrin 
women, and has done much to lift them out of their 
servile state. To them, on the morrow of the terrible 
war with the Turks in 1876, he dedicated his most 
popular drama, The Maiden of the Balkans, from the 
prologue to which I give, from a French translation, 
these examples of his poetic eloquence : 

' ' O Montenegrin women ! I bless you ! You who keep 
so deep in your hearts the love of the Fatherland, who have 
accompanied us on all the fields of battle, and who mourn 
only at the end of the fight for those who have perished. 

" In your touching complaints you celebrate the death of 
heroes, and you encourage us to further exploits. 

" Harassed, starved, your feet torn by the hard rocks, 
227 



The War Lords 

your clothes in shreds, you steal towards us, on the frontiers 
of the menaced land, bringing us arms and food. 

" In the midst of the thick smoke of powder and fire, hard 
by the cross, the symbol of our liberty, I have seen your 
angel faces shine, our sisters ! And giving way to my emotion 
(to the glow in my heart) , I would fain have sung of your vir- 
tues, your sacrifices, your efforts, your ardent patriotism. . . . 

" On the banks of the Zeta my imagination met a woman 
who cherished the same ideals as yours. I put in her mouth 
your deeds and your virtue. I made her live in my lines as 
I saw her in my dream, so that she may serve as an everlasting 
model to the young women of Montenegro." 

He has a love for his country which only the perils 
it has passed could give. " It is not the largest country 
in the world," he admits — " not even the largest in 
the Balkans. But I would not exchange it for any 
other land under Heaven." And he loves his people 
too, so long as they let him have his own way. For 
he is an autocrat sans phrase. Once, it is true, he fell. 
It was his enthusiasm for Russia that did it — Russia 
his protector and his paymaster. When the Duma was 
established he plunged into constitutionalism too. 
And he did it thoroughly, manhood suffrage, all ques- 
tions to be discussed, and so on. When he saw what 
it all meant, however, he clapped the troublesome 
leaders in prison with shaven heads and fettered 
limbs, then went " on strike " to his country house, 
and told the Skuptschina he would have nothing to 
do with it. The Skuptschina found that in the absence 
of such a vitally important part of the government 
machinery as Prince Nicholas the business of the State 
could not be transacted. They had, for instance, 
occasion to refer to foreign Powers on certain ques- 
tions. "What is Prince Nicholas' view?" said the 
foreign Powers. " What is your opinion? " said the 
Skuptschina to the Prince. " I haven't an opinion," 
said the Prince. " I don't even exist." His victory was 
228 



King Nicholas of Montenegro 

complete. The Skuptschina surrendered and implored 
him to return. 

Fortunately the conflict between the Prince and his 
Parliament was bridged over by the Austrian annexa- 
tion of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which roused the Mon- 
tenegrins to fury. They had, in 1875, gone with 
Serbia to war to rescue their kindred of Bosnia from 
the tyranny of the Turk; but when victory seemed 
assured Austria came in to defeat the reunion of the 
Serbian race, and since then the old hostility to the 
Turk had been turned against the new tyrant from 
the north. With the annexation of Bosnia in 1909 that 
hostility burst into flame. The people clamoured for 
war; but the old warrior would not have it. For with 
all his military ardour and genius — and in the war 
against the Turks in 1876 he revealed brilliant 
strategic qualities — he has the caution of the states- 
man. Thrice he has withstood the war fever of his 
people, and it is the highest tribute to his bravery and 
his patriotism that in doing so he has retained their 
confidence and devotion. It is a confidence which 
dates back to the 'sixties, when, after the Turks had 
ravaged the country with fire and sword, the young 
King set himself to organise his people afresh for war 
and peace, giving them not only a new military 
system but also a rudimentary educational system. 
He has sought to suppress the blood feud that still 
prevails amongst his fierce people ; but not with entire 
success, and murder is still the most familiar crime in 
that semi-barbaric land. He, indeed, in his earlier days 
is alleged to have had a feud of his own which he 
carried through with terrible completeness. 

But if he held his people back against Austria in 
1909 he was their willing leader against the Turk in 
1912. It was Montenegro that fired the first shot in 
the Balkan War, and Nicholas set out to what seemed 

22Q 



The War Lords 

like the last struggle with the foe of five centuries. 
" What a marching life is mine," he might have cried 
with Charlemagne. It is said that he hastened the 
war in order to celebrate his birthday ; but that is to 
•do this wise old man of the mountains an injustice. 
He has never played the part of the irresponsible 
egoist. Even when at his Jubilee he succeeded in 
converting his Princedom into a Kingdom it was not 
vanity that inspired him, as it had inspired Prince 
Ferdinand of Bulgaria. It was love of his little land. 
He would not have it subordinate to its neighbours. 
If Bulgaria was to be a Kingdom, Montenegro should 
be a Kingdom too. It was the Kingdom, not the 
Kingship that he sought. 

But even the Balkan War was not the end of his 
■marching life. It was only the preliminary to the 
greatest struggle of all, the struggle in which at 
last the Serbian people were fighting for their unity 
against both their historic foes, not alone but with the 
support of every friend of freedom in Europe. When 
the war is over Nicholas will hang up his sword for the 
last time, and the days of the isolation of the little 
people of the Black Mountain will be over. How, 
after such centuries of fighting, they will consort with 
the lamb of peace is hard to imagine. Perhaps, 
absorbed in a Serbian reunion, they will emerge into 
a larger life. But not until the brave old King has 
taken his farewell. He is the last of the heroes of an 
ancient tradition. When he goes, modernism will come 
among the mountains. On some sunny day when 
peace reigns you may see the clash of the old and the 
new in his palace grounds. The old King rides forth, 
not on his donkey, but on his favourite horse, salut- 
ing familiarly with the ease of a perfect cavalier. 
He dashes across the park towards the tennis court 
where the young Princes Danilo and Mirko with the 
230 



King Nicholas of Montenegro 

princesses are playing tennis in the midst of the Corps 
Diplomatique who mark and watch the game. The 
tough old conqueror of Mouktar and of Mahmoud- 
Pasha holds in small esteem this child's play, an 
importation from England, in which the man is often 
conquered by the woman. And perhaps with rough 
geniality he makes a sudden swerve into the midst of 
the onlookers, puts his horse over the net and then 
at full speed disappears in the wild gorges of the 
mountains, while the players, familiar with these 
robust freaks of the giant, resume their interrupted 
game with laughter. 

The tennis player will succeed the old chieftain. 
Prince Danilo, with his motor-cars, his love for sport, 
his familiarity with half a dozen languages, his con- 
ventional foreign dress and his perfect manners, is 
centuries away from the old Montenegrin patriarch. 
He will take his place naturally among the other 
foreign and denationalised rulers of the Balkans. 
King Nicholas will end the tradition of the old Black 
Mountain princes, and will pass naturally into the 
realm of legend, where he will live for ever a brave and 
sagacious figure, the father of his people, sitting at his 
front door in the sunshine, accessible to the humblest 
peasant, and with a single soldier as sentinel; dealing 
out justice under a tree, like St. Louis; loving a good 
Slav ballad as much as plum brandy; making the 
songs of his people ; giving them laws ; leading them 
to victory. It is a figure on which history will dwell 
with affection — perhaps also with regret that the 
modern world has no place for the peasant King. 



231 



KING FERDINAND 

In those brilliant days of last July when Berlin and 
Vienna were making their calculations for the great 
adventure it is certain that Bulgaria played a large 
part in them. It was only a pawn in the game, but 
it was a pawn in a very critical position, and upon its 
operations would depend the course of events in one 
of the capital areas of the coming war. It might even 
turn the scale in the major theatre of that war. 

In normal circumstances it would not have seemed 
possible for the Kaiser to have calculated on anything 
but the decisive hostility of the Bulgarian people. 
He had " put his money " — to use the phrase made 
famous by Lord Salisbury in the same connection — 
on Turkey, the historic enemy of Bulgaria. And his 
diplomacy, even as long ago as 1898, had begun to 
assume the patronage of the Moslem world. It was 
in his speech at Damascus in that year that he said : 
" The three hundred million Mohammedans who live 
scattered over the globe may be assured of this, that 
the German Emperor will be their friend at all times." 
The world laughed at the mingled insolence and 
vanity of the remark, but it was, in fact, an audacious 
declaration of world policy, as the Kruger telegram 
had been before it. He sent his greatest statesman, 
Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, to build up German 
influence at the Porte, and even on the morrow of the 
Armenian massacres, when the streets of Constanti- 
nople were still red with Christian blood, he had 
shocked the world by sending a message of flattering 
patronage to Abdul Hamid. It was probably owing 
to his influence that the Germans were the only 
232 







.If W &**' 




Ferdinand, 
King of Bulgaria 






King Ferdinand 



Christian people in Constantinople who, during the 
massacre in that city, refused to shelter the Armenians. 
Even the revolution and the advent of the Young 
Turks did not affect his policy. He transferred his 
affections to the new rulers and made a tool of the 
ambitious Enver Pasha, and the inertness of our own- 
representation at Constantinople left his policy un- 
obstructed. In all the collateral circumstances which 
led to the great tragedy there were few more regret- 
table than the failure of this country to maintain the 
friendship of the Young Turk movement. In that 
movement, as in most, there were conflicting motives, 
but at the beginning I believe the main motive was 
a genuine Liberal enthusiasm. That was certainly 
the impression at that historic dinner at the Hotel 
Cecil when representatives of all the English parties 
entertained the representatives of the new Ottoman 
Parliament. We felt that a better day had dawned, 
at last in the Balkans and that Turkish misrule was 
at an end. But that hope died out. The Young 
Turk, cold-shouldered by our Embassy, fell under the 
influence of Germany, and the result revealed itself 
in the triumph of all the evil elements of the move- 
ment, and the revival of the Turkifying policy of the 
past and the suppression of all the Liberal ideas with 
which the revolution began. The cry of tortured. 
Macedonia rose from under the harrow of the New 
Turk as it had risen from under that of the old Turk. 
Three years later, the Balkan League, which had 
been a dream, became a reality with Bulgaria as 
its spearhead, and in a swift campaign the Turk was 
decisively and it seemed finally beaten. Constanti- 
nople itself would perhaps have fallen to the Bul- 
garians but for the opposition of Russia, which had. 
no wish to see the city on the Bosphorus the capital, 
of a great Balkan confederation. 

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This, as we can see to-day, was the turning point of 
much more than the fate of the Balkans. The Great 
Powers, looking on at the Balkan struggle with their 
hands upon their swords, watched events with very 
diverse sympathies. Hitherto those events had gone 
against Germany. Turkey, her protege, whose officers 
she had trained and whose guns she had made, had 
been shattered, and the Balkan Powers, united for 
the first time in history, were triumphant. All her 
diplomacy at Constantinople had been in vain, her 
path to Salonika and Asia Minor seemed finally cut 
off, and in any coming struggle she would have to 
reckon on the hostility of South-Eastern Europe. 
It is probable that this moment — or rather the 
moment just prior — was the gloomiest experience 
the Kaiser had had in the development of his far- 
reaching game. 

But it was at this moment that the current turned 
in his favour, and the man who had most influence in 
turning it was probably King Ferdinand. Not the 
least of the advantages with which the Kaiser began 
the war were the sympathies of those who occupied 
the thrones of the outlying and secondary powers. 
Germany, with its prolific growth of royal houses, has 
always done a large export trade in royalties. When- 
ever a throne was vacant or a new throne was estab- 
lished, it was to Germany that the people in search of 
a king naturally went to market, and it was not often 
that they failed to find the article they required. The 
result has been profitable to the Kaiser. The bread 
cast upon the waters has come back in many days, 
" and buttered tu, for sartin," as Mr. Biglow would 
say. North and south there was the same pheno- 
menon — the royal house in sympathy with Germany, 
the people in sympathy with the Allies. It is a fact 
which deserves to be carefully remembered by the 
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King Ferdinand 



democracy in all countries, for it has an important 
bearing on the part which the monarchical idea plays 
in the affairs of nations. In Greece the king has the 
Kaiser's sister for his wife ; in Roumania the throne 
is occupied by a Hohenzollern ; in Sweden the king 
is connected with Germany by marriage ; in Bulgaria 
the king is a Coburg-Orleanist. And no one, survey- 
ing the history of the war, can doubt how powerful 
has been that Germanic influence in the palaces in 
checking the popular sympathies of these countries. 

But it is Ferdinand whose influence on events has 
been most subtle and most powerful. And as a pre- 
liminary to understanding why Bulgaria — which owes 
its freedom to Russia, which for centuries has been 
engaged in a fierce struggle with the Turk, which 
reverences the name of Gladstone more than that of 
any statesman, and which has always looked to 
England as its political champion — is in this supreme 
crisis found preserving a morose aloofness from the 
cause of the Allies, it is necessary to understand 
King Ferdinand. 

In a house in Sofia, I have been told, there is a dead 
hand, preserved not as a relic but as a reminder. 
The house is the old home of the murdered Stambuloff , 
the hand is the hand of that rough-hewn patriot 
himself. One day the hand is to be buried. The day 
will be that on which Stambuloffs murder is avenged. 
It is an uncomfortable reflection for King Ferdinand. 

And yet to live under the shadow of a dead hand 
seems the perfectly fitting destiny of Ferdinand, for 
he is the king of melodrama. Those people who 
suppose that melodrama is not true to life have not 
studied his story or his character. Both are trans- 
pontine. He is the very stuff of which the dreams of 
the playwright and the romancist are compact. 
There are times indeed when you almost doubt 
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whether he was not invented by Dumas or Stevenson 
or Anthony Hope: you seem to see the movement 
of the wires and the face of the author between the 
wings enjoying the success of his triumphant creation. 
When the curtain goes down the author will surely 
appear and thank you for your kind reception of the 
child of his invention. 

As a matter of fact King Ferdinand was invented 
by his mother. It used to be said that Princess 
Clementine was the cleverest woman in Europe. This 
only meant that she was a very skilful and ambitious 
intriguer. The daughter of King Louis Philippe and 
the widow of Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 
she felt that her youngest and favourite child had a 
special claim upon Providence. She resolved that he 
should be a king by hook or by crook. Moreover, she 
had the assurance of a gipsy that he was destined like 
Macbeth for a throne, and Princess Clementine was 
not a person to bandy words with a gipsy. She took 
the practical course, and prepared her son, from the 
cradle, for the career marked out for him. He was 
whisked from capital to capital, habituated to the 
company of princes, indoctrinated with the diplo- 
matic subtleties of " The Prince," taught the facile 
graces of the charmeur, made to cultivate entomology 
asone of those hobbies that sitso prettilyon potentates, 
coached in half a dozen languages, even in Hungarian, 
for one never knew from whence the call to kingship 
would come. Thrones might spring up or fall vacant 
anywhere. One must be ready to pounce. It is a 
beautiful idyll of maternal love — a modern inversion 
of the legend of the Roman matron who sacrificed her 
children to the State. 

The moment came. One day some twenty-seven 
years ago, there sat in a Viennese beer garden a group 
of Bulgarian statesmen. They were returning empty- 
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King Ferdinand 



handed from their quest for a prince. They had a 
throne to offer, but had found no one hungry enough 
to take it. Nor was the reluctance of the European 
princelings surprising. Ten years had passed since 
Bulgaria had won its freedom after five centuries of 
Turkish misrule. But it had only escaped from the 
tyranny of the Turk to fall under the shadow of Russia. 
The Tsar meant it to be the pawn in his own Balkan 
game. Poor Prince Alexander of Battenberg — brave, 
courageous, and beloved by the simple Bulgarian 
peasantry — had been dethroned, and any one who 
ventured to follow him had to face the menace of 
Russia. And without Russia none of the Powers would 
give him countenance. In this emergency one man 
stood like a rock between Bulgaria and the Russian. 
It was Stambuloff, the innkeeper's son. Rude and 
violent, a man who combined a sincere patriotism 
with uncouth manners and a genius for statesman- 
ship, he had been largely responsible for throwing 
off the yoke of Turkey, and now fought with equal 
passion to resist Russian aggression. It was he 
who had sent out the commission to find a prince — 
the commission that now sat forlorn and unsuccessful 
in the Viennese beer garden. Enter Major Laabe. 
He learned their business — knew their business, indeed, 
for was he not the advance agent of the Prince-in- 
search-of-a-throne ? " Why, gentlemen, there is just 
the man you want," said he, pointing to a young- 
officer in the white tunic and gold-laced kepi of 
Austrian Hussars who was sitting near by — how 
accidentally one can only guess. " He is Ferdinand of 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, grandson of Louis Philippe, a 
cousin of every crowned head in Europe, a favourite 
of the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar, and a man 
of wealth." 

It is a delightful story and it may be true. In any 
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case, the boat that a year before had brought the 
dethroned Alexander up the Danube took Ferdinand 
down. No prince ever entered upon a more precarious 
enterprise than his. Unrecognised by the Powers 
without, faced by a masterful minister within, he 
seemed the princeling of an hour — a momentary 
incident in Bulgaria's troubled story. And yet at the 
end of twenty-five years his throne was secure, his 
country stable and prosperous, he was smiled on by 
the Powers, his princeship had become a kingship, he 
stood at the head of a triumphant army with the Turk 
under foot, and it seemed that he might emerge from 
the war the Emperor of the Balkans as the King of 
Prussia emerged from the war of 1870 the Emperor 
of the Germans. It was the triumph of a subtle diplo- 
macy, motived by one dominating passion — personal 
ambition. There were some who, in their enthusiasm 
for Bulgaria, found in Ferdinand the chivalrous hero 
who had wrought the miracle. The success of his 
policy prejudiced their judgment of the man. But if 
we are to understand Ferdinand we must distinguish 
between public results and private motives. It may 
be that no other instrument could have accomplished 
what this purely artificial monarch had accomplished 
for Bulgaria. The determination to " arrive " him- 
self had enabled Bulgaria to arrive also. Between him 
and his people there is an immeasurable gulf fixed. 
A solid, somewhat dour, but very virile race, the 
Bulgarians have no point of contact in temperament 
or sympathies with their sovereign. He has had to 
conquer them, as he had to conquer the Powers and 
Stambuloff. They, a simple, undemonstrative people, 
were revolted by the vanity of their prince. While his 
neighbour, Nicholas of Montenegro, sat at his door 
and was accessible to any peasant, Ferdinand assumed 
the pose and habits of the grand monarque. Within 
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King Ferdinand 



a few days of his arrival he had refused to see the 
representatives of England, Austria, and Italy because 
they did not appear in the presence in uniform. No 
king in Europe is hedged round with more pomp and 
ceremony than Ferdinand, travels in more regal style, 
assumes a more Olvmpian air, cultivates so extra- 
vagant an etiquette. Even his little son cannot ride 
abroad without a cavalcade and an ecclesiastical 
dignity in attendance. His relative, the Comtesse de 
Paris, once said of him that he cared for nothing 
except titles and orders, and the industry with which 
for years he canvassed the Courts of Europe for a 
crown gives colour to the saying. 

But vain though he is, his ambition soars beyond 
titles. Like Charles the First, he will be " a king 
indeed/' and not a mockery of a king. He will stoop 
low to conquer, it is true. Neither his faith, nor his 
dignity, nor loyalty to those who have served him 
will stand in the way of his march to power. When 
he found that Russia remained obdurate, even 
though Stambuloff had been removed, he bartered 
his faith and his word to win her smiles. He himself 
is a Roman Catholic, and when he married his first 
wife, Princess Marie Louise of Parma, he agreed that 
their children should be brought up in the faith of 
Rome. But when all else had failed to placate 
Russia, he had his son Boris " converted " to the 
Orthodox Church, in spite of the scorn of the world 
and the flight of his wife with her younger son to 
escape the outrage to her faith. " The West has 
pronounced its anathema against me," he said, but 
he had won his prize. Russia smiled on him, recognised 
him, and with that recognition came the countenance 
of all the Great Powers. The path to glory was at 
last clear. 

But it was in the Stambuloff episode that his 
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character was most startingly revealed. It is a dark 
story. History could not show a more dramatic 
contrast of personalities than that provided by 
Ferdinand and the Minister who made him prince 
— the one all artifice, the other all primitive nature. 
Stambuloff was a ruthless man set in ruthless circum- 
stances. He had one passion — love of his country. 
To that passion he sacrificed everything and every- 
body — most of all he sacrificed himself. Turkey had 
been driven out of his vineyard; but the agents of 
Russia were overrunning it. He was alone in the 
midst of a web of plots and intrigues and he fought 
like a giant, mercilessly, cunningly. Meanwhile he 
was consolidating the country, constructing railways, 
developing its resources, giving it education, build- 
ing up its army, laying the foundations of that power 
that was to win the respect of the world later. To 
him Ferdinand was only a necessary instrument in 
his scheme to defeat the machinations of Russia and 
to establish the freedom of his land. And he found 
him, instead, anxious only to be approved by Russia 
and the Powers. The liberty of Ferdinand's kingdom 
was threatened; his very life was in daily peril; he 
lived on the brink of a volcano, and yet his dreams 
were the dreams of pomp and vanity. Two such 
men could not run permanently in harness. One 
may sympathise with the prince, for Stambuloff was 
" gey ill to live wi\" He had no reverence for princes 
and a mighty scorn for the shows of things. He was 
fighting a tremendous battle and was apt to forget 
bis manners. " I cannot and will not be seen with 
you if you don't take that frippery off," he is said 
to have exclaimed when, his mind full of fierce 
actualities, he found himself in the presence of his 
prince, who was clothed in a wonderful coronation 
mantle of purple and ermine. " Some people will 
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King Ferdinand 



think you are mad. There are more urgent matters 
to be attended to than coronation mantles. For 
instance, your Highness might see that you get a 
more trustworthy bodyguard, or else " 

An uncomfortable master — a master who would 
neither flatter him nor betray him. For Russia 
intimated that she would be Bulgaria's friend if only 
Stambuloff would surrender this usurper — if only 
Ferdinand could be sent the way of Alexander. But 
Stambuloff knew that to surrender the prince was to 
surrender Bulgaria. It was not the man he cared 
for, but the nationality of which he had become the 
symbol. 

But if the minister would not betray the prince, 
the prince could desert the minister. One day, during 
his absence abroad, Ferdinand wrote an official letter 
forbidding Stambuloff to report to him, and declaring 
that his conduct was " infame." Stambuloff resigned 
in a letter in which he said, " cela ne fait honneur ni 
au peuple bulgare, ni a son Prince, si Tactivite d'un 
ministre bulgare doit etre caracterisee par l'adjectif 
' infame.' " 

Ferdinand was free. "Henceforth," he said, "I 
mean to rule as well as to reign." He has kept his 
word. But while Stambuloff lived the shadow of that 
terrible man hung over his path. It was said that 
he was to be brought to trial. It would have been 
well if he had been. There were plenty of crimes 
against him, for he had dipped his hands deep in the 
blood of those enemies whom he believed to be the 
enemies of his country. But he was not tried. In- 
stead, his house was surrounded by spies; his steps 
were dogged wherever he went. He appealed to be 
allowed to go to Karlsbad for his health, but the 
request was refused by the Government. He then 
declared publicly that he was being kept in Sofia to be 

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murdered. On the 15th July, 1895, in the streets of 
Sofia, with the police looking on, he was brutally 
butchered — not merely murdered, but mutilated. 
Prince Ferdinand, who had gone to Karlsbad, tele- 
graphed his grief to the widow and ordered his 
highest Court official to tender his condolences to 
her personally. The telegram was unanswered; the 
official was refused admission. Europe rang with 
the murder. Petkoff, who narrowly escaped death 
with his friend, denounced the Prince; the Svoboda 
openly accused him and his Ministers of instigating 
the murder; the Vossische Zeitung said that " if any 
ordinary citizen of any State had been so incriminated 
as Prince Ferdinand had been, the man would have 
been arrested." No one was arrested; no one was 
punished. 

It will be seen that those who dismiss King Ferdi- 
nand as a mere scented popinjay are mistaken. To 
have come a stranger into a land seething with re- 
bellion — a land where he was to have been a prince 
in name and a mere instrument of policy in fact — 
to have matched himself against the Bulgarian Bis- 
marck and overthrown him, to have won his crown 
and made himself " a King indeed," as despotic as 
any King in Europe, to stand at the end of twenty- 
five years at the head of an army that had astonished 
the world and at the head of a League that con- 
fronted Europe with a new political fact of the first 
magnitude — all this implies more than the vanity 
and the febrile futility with which his enemies credit 
him. He is " the artful Augustus " of a later Gibbon, 
a Napoleon the Third with more than Napoleon's 
calculation and statesmanship. " I am the rock 
against which the waves beat in vain," he said 
grandiloquently long ago — and his courtiers laughed, 
He is not that. But he is the supple artificer of great- 
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King Ferdinand 



ness, innocent of scruple, swift to take fortune at 
the flood, one who " makes nice of no vile hold to 
stay him up," and has that wonderful instinct of 
self-preservation which enables him in all emergencies 
to fall lightly upon his feet. He applies the arts of 
the mediaeval prince to Twentieth-Century conditions 
and Machiavelli himself would have little to teach 
him. 

Now it would be unfair to suggest that all the 
responsibility for the course of events that left 
Bulgaria outside the orbit of the Allies, when the 
second war began, rested on King Ferdinand. It was 
shared by others, by Serbia, by Russia to some extent, 
by the Bulgarian people themselves, certainly by M. 
Daneff, who, always with Bismarck and his methods 
in mind, aimed at a Bulgarian dominion in the Balkans. 
Indeed if we penetrate to the ultimate sources of 
things, Great Britain is perhaps as responsible as any. 
For it is not mere ingenuity that sees in the war that 
is devastating Europe to-day the outcome of the Berlin 
Treaty with which Disraeli wrought the wrong and 
dazzled his countrymen. With that sympathy for the 
Turk which is universally characteristic of the Jew, 
he became his saviour in Europe, destroyed the Treaty 
of San Stefano, and handed Macedonia back to be 
ground under his heel. Bismarck, watching events 
with his grim humour, saw that all was well. He was 
not going to be involved in the quarrel with Russia, 
for friendship with Russia was the unchanging key of 
his policy, and he declared that the Balkans were 
" not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian 
grenadier." But if he was not going to get into trouble 
with Russia himself he was quite happy to see Russia 
in trouble with others, and when Austria, anxious to 
protect her own interests in the Balkans, wanted to 
intervene in the war he astutely opposed the idea. 
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He was right. A new abscess was formed in the 
Balkans. The war of 1877 — or rather the crime that 
followed the war — was the seed of the Balkan war of 
1912, and the wars of 1912 begot in large measure 
the European war of to-day. 

But if many shoulders share the responsibility for 
the detachment of Bulgaria from its natural alliance 
with the Allies to-day, the main personal responsi- 
bility rests on King Ferdinand. He had risen from a 
wandering princeling to a monarch. He had in 1912 
emerged from one of the most successful wars in 
history, and his dream of a Balkan Empire, with him- 
self as the Tsar of the Empire, seemed within reach. 
The genius of Venizelos had given reality and states- 
manship to the Balkanic federation : Ferdinand would 
convert that federation into a dominion under his 
own sway. In pursuing this entirely personal aim 
he appealed unfortunately to the sentiment of his 
people. They are in many respects one of the most 
reputable peoples in Europe — honest, industrious, 
capable. But their success since they had thrown off 
the yoke of the Turk had filled them with ambitions. 
They believed themselves to be the master people of 
the Balkans and their leaders had cultivated the dream 
of a four-seas hegemony, a Bulgarian dominion ex- 
tending to the shores of the Black Sea, the Sea of 
Marmora, the iEgean, and the Adriatic. 

It was unfortunate that at the crisis of the war 
with Turkey, when the Balkan League was in peril, 
Bulgaria was represented at the conference in London 
and subsequently by M. Daneff rather than by the 
statesmanlike M. Gueshoff, as M. Venizelos under- 
stood would be the case. Why the change was made 
I do not know, but it had fatal consequences. M. 
Daneff is of the Prussian type of diplomatist. He 
believes in " hacking his way through," and though 
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King Ferdinand 

M. Venizelos risked his popularity in Greece by the 
concessions he was prepared to make, he could come 
to no terms with his blunt and blundering opponent, 
who insisted on having Salonika as well as Macedonia 
as his share of the Turkish plunder. And unhappily 
Serbia, under the mischievous influence of M. Hart- 
wig, the Russian minister, was equally intractable. 
She tore up the agreement she had made with 
Bulgaria before the Turkish war as to the distribu- 
tion of territory, and set up claims to Southern 
Macedonia. 

But the disaster would have been avoided if 
King Ferdinand had worked loyally with Venizelos. 
He, however, seized the opportunity Serbia had 
given him to launch out on the conquest of the 
Balkans. That he authorised the attack which led 
to the final dissolution of the League and the second 
Balkan war is a fact which is well known in diplo- 
matic circles. It is proved collaterally by the strange 
episode of the prosecution after the war of General 
Savoff for corruption. That prosecution was suddenly 
dropped, and the only reason that exists for that 
unexplained fact is the allegation that Savoff threat- 
ened, unless the proceedings were stopped, to publish 
the order from King Ferdinand authorising the 
attack on Serbia. 

Ambition never suffered a more disastrous fall. 
The Bulgarian armies instead of marching triumph- 
antly to Salonika and Nish, were overwhelmingly 
defeated by the Greeks and the Serbians, and in the 
subsequent conference at Bucharest Bulgaria saw 
her trophies from the war with Turkey reduced to the 
barest minimum. So far from having Salonika she was 
denied Kavala, which Venizelos had offered her as the 
price of the maintenance of the League. But her 
greatest humiliation was the loss of Southern Mace- 

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donia. Her claim to this region was not merely founded 
in ambition and in the Balkan Treaty of February 
1912, but sprang justly from the principle of nation- 
ality. For though the population of the Monastir 
vilayet is very mixed it is predominately Bulgarian 
both in race and sympathy. The crime of King 
Ferdinand and his ministers had been punished 
by a sentence which all the world admitted to be 
unjust and a violation of those rights of nationality 
which are never outraged without disaster. Bulgaria 
retired from the conference beaten, humiliated, and 
full of bitterness and thoughts of revenge. And when 
the European war came she stood aloof from the 
struggle, the centre of the discontent in the Balkans 
and the one obstacle to a decisive movement in 
favour of the Allies. Had the Balkan League survived, 
had the Treaty of London been insisted on by the 
Powers, had even the Treaty of Bucharest been a 
just settlement of the claims of the rivals, there would 
have been an irresistible movement against Germany 
in the Balkans last August. Turkey would never have 
ventured to enter into the struggle, and the popular 
sentiment of Greece, Bulgaria, and Roumania would 
have triumphed over the Germanic sympathies of the 
courts and brought those countries into the field with 
Serbia, under the inspiration of Balkan unity and 
freedom. 

But Bulgaria would not move, and without Bul- 
garia none would move, for Roumania and Greece 
believed that if things went wrong Bulgaria would seize 
her moment for vengeance. And so the three powers 
stand watching the struggle, watching each other, 
watching their old enemy Turkey plunge into the 
fight, watching their old ally Serbia being bled white 
for freedom. Venizelos made a brave effort to restore 
the League and bring it to the help of the Allies, but 
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King Ferdinand 



the King of Greece brought his scheme to ruin and 
with his failure the Kaiser had won in this critical 
field of the war. He had won because he had captured 
the active help of Turkey without incurring the active 
hostility of Turkey's historic enemies. He had had 
many helpers in escaping from the dark moment of 
1912 when a united Balkans had overthrown the Turk 
and barred the German advance to the South-East . 
Russia's fear of a great Balkan Federation had helped 
him. Her check to Bulgaria when her armies were 
marching on Constantinople had helped him. The 
failure of the Allies to see that their supreme interest 
was to rebuild and maintain the Balkan League at all 
costs had helped him. The wrong done to Bulgaria 
by Greece, Serbia, and Roumania in the settlement 
of Bucharest had helped him. But it was the 
ambition of King Ferdinand that had helped him 
most. On the day that the monarch issued his order 
to Savoff to attack the Allies who had aided him to 
overthrow Turkey, he brought ruin to the Balkans 
and disaster to himself; but he brought joy to the 
heart of the Kaiser. He had achieved Balkan dis- 
union, which was the hope of the Kaiser in the coming 
struggle, in place of Balkan unity, which, though 
unhappily they did not realise it, was the interest of 
the Allies. 

But the sympathies of the Bulgarian people may 
yet save Ferdinand from the consequences of his own 
acts. Far deeper than their anger with their neigh- 
bours is their regard for Russia, their " deliverer," 
and for England, their steadfast friend. Ferdinand 
knows this, and being an astute monarch he will 
know when it is no longer safe to be the drag on the 
wheel of events in the Balkans. If that day comes 
there will be no more ardent recruit to the cause of 
the Allies than the Bulgarian people. 

247 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 

AND THE SPIRIT OF GERMANY 

Paris has many tragic memories, but it has no 
memory graven so deep as that of the morning of 
March I, 1871. Famine had brought the city to 
surrender and the great siege was over. The terms of 
capitulation had been settled, and on this March morn- 
ing, whose brightness was so out of key with the sad- 
ness that reigned throughout the fallen city, the 
Prussians were to enter as victors. It was a quarter to 
nine when, looking down the Avenue de la Grande 
Armee, the gloomy citizens assembled near the Arc de 
Triomphe — what a name for such a day! — saw the 
approach of the first outriders of the coming host. 
There were six or seven of them, and they were led by 
a big man on a brown horse, a lieutenant of the 2nd 
Hessian Hussars. He was the first specimen of the 
triumphant foe on whom the Parisians had set eyes, 
and they watched his advance with an interest that 
was none the less intense because it was charged with 
such bitter thoughts. Had they been able to read the 
future they would have watched him still more 
closely, for long after they were to hear of him again. 
The young lieutenant reached the Arc de Triomphe, 
which was hidden by sandbags. What followed I give 
in the words of an Englishman who had been in Paris 
during the siege and had come out to witness the final 
scene of the great tragedy. " My Uhlan gives a look 
about, gazes up at the Triumphal Arch, trots his steed 
around it, as if looking for the way under it, and 
apparently not clear how he is to pass beneath the 
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General von Bernhardi 



General von Bernhardi 

grand arch, turns his horse's head and gallops back 
to his friends. The group presses forward and at the 
Arc de Triomphe the same manoeuvre is repeated. 
Their disappointment at being baulked of their desire 
to pass under it like conquering heroes is too manifest 
not to be noticeable; but, putting the best face (a 
somewhat wry one) upon a clear case of non possumus, 
they gallop off, full tear, down the Avenue des 
Champs Eiysees, and soon disappear." 

That scene at the Arc de Triomphe has been 
described by the chief actor himself. " We advanced," 
he wrote, " at full gallop through the long empty 
avenue as far as the Arc de Triomphe. Here a dense 
mass of men rushed up at me and I was thinking I 
should have to make use of arms when I heard the 
well-known guttural sounds of the sons of Albion. 
1 What's your name?' 'What regiment?' etc. 
They were all of them newspaper correspondents." 
The reference to " guttural sounds " is delicious from 
a German ; but the interesting fact is the omission of 
any allusion to the disappointment at finding no way 
of entering Paris under the great arch. It was a small 
thing, but it meant much to the military mind. If the 
superstitious saw in it an omen they are not without 
evidence of fulfilment. That check to the Prussian at 
the gates of Paris was one day to be repeated on a 
scale to which history offers no parallel. 

Forty-four years passed by and the young lieu- 
tenant, young no longer, was once more in the centre 
of the world stage, his name on every lip, himself the 
sinister embodiment of the menace of Prussia as on that 
March morning he had been the embodiment of its 
triumph. In the interval he had become a general, the 
most distinguished cavalry leader of the German army. 
But his fame, so far as the military world was con 
cerned, rested on his writings. He was the most 

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illustrious of the host of authors who poured out the 
vast literature of war in Germany, the significance of 
which the world was so slow to realise. Some of his 
books had been translated into English, and it is 
interesting to recall to-day that one of them, Cavalry 
in Future Wars, had an introduction of warm approval 
from the pen of the most distinguished cavalry leader 
of the British Army, Sir John French. But the writer 
was still unknown to the English people who are 
normally as indifferent to the literature of war as to 
the literature of the Scarabee. 

The war came like a bolt from the blue, and then 
one morning, while the world was still reeling under 
the blow, there appeared on the bookstalls an orange- 
coloured book with the German eagle silhouetted on 
the cover. Its title was Germany and the Next War 
(" Deutschland und der Nachste Krieg "). There has, 
I suppose, in all the history of books been nothing 
comparable to this apparition. In its ordinary form 
it had appeared two or three years before, been 
reviewed in the newspapers as an illustration of the 
mind of the German militarist school, and forgotten. 
But now it burst on the country like a shell and lit up 
the darkness like a tongue of flame. By the light of 
its astonishing candour the nation saw in one swift 
flash the meaning of the calamity into which the 
world had been plunged, understood what forces had 
triumphed in Germany, realised that the issue of the 
war was whether the world was to live under the 
rule of Krupps or the laws of freedom. The publica- 
tion of the book will always be a capital illustration 
of the strange mentality of Prussia which has so 
baffled the world. It is not difficult to understand 
the type of mind that thinks as Bernhardi thinks. The 
militarist mind is the same everywhere and always 
thinks in the terms of Force. But it is hard to under- 
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General von Bernhardi 

stand the mental condition of the man who, thinking 
as Bernhardi thought, sits down to tell all his thoughts 
to the world. It is as if, in a spirit of intellectual 
abstraction, the polite burglar, meeting his intended 
victim, explains the crime he proposes to commit, 
how he intends to carry it out, and what he will do 
with the plunder. It is not that he wishes his victim 
to know ; but that in his enthusiasm for his theories 
he forgets that his victim has ears and understanding. 
Indeed he forgets his victim altogether. He is a man 
talking aloud to himself. He reminds one of that 
story of Coleridge who, taking Lamb by the button 
of his coat, began talking to him in the garden at 
Highgate. Lamb saw no way of escape except to cut 
off the button. This he did, leaving Coleridge talking 
to the Empyrean. Returning in the afternoon he 
looked over the hedge. There was Coleridge, the button 
between his fingers, still addressing the universe. 

It is this philosophic detachment, coupled with an 
entire lack of the humour and imagination which 
enable you to " put yourself in his place " and to see 
the other man's point of view, which has puzzled the 
English mind in the conduct of Germany. It is as 
though we are in conflict with a people who live on 
another plane, move in another realm of morals, and 
are unconscious of the public opinion of the world. 
As an illustration of the lack of humour, what could 
be more illuminating than the spectacle of a nation 
screaming Lissauer's " Hymn of Hate " and adopting 
as its battle cry the infantile " Gott strafe England/' 
If we will try to conceive ourselves decorating our 
toys with " God punish Germany," and greeting each 
other solemnly in the morning with the same senti- 
ment we shall have some appreciation of the mental 
condition of Germany and its lack of a sane and 
clarifying humour. And the deficiency of imagination, 

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of the understanding of the effect of things upon other 
minds, is illustrated not only by Bernhardt s books, 
but by nearly every public act of the Germans since 
the war began. Bethmann-Hollweg dismisses the 
undertaking of Germany to respect the neutrality of 
Belgium as " just a scrap of paper " and it is not 
until six months later that he realises the effect of 
that declaration on the mind of the world and pro- 
ceeds to explain it away. The Germans desolate 
Belgium and murder its public men and then appeal 
to the American people, the most humane and senti- 
mental people in the world, for sympathy. They 
torpedo ship-loads of helpless non-combatants, and 
while they are doing it ask the world to accept them 
as the champions of the freedom of the seas. It is not 
that they are cynical. Cynicism is the product of dis- 
illusionment and unfaith. It is rather that they are 
afflicted with a frightful seriousness that makes them 
indifferent to pity or humour or even ordinary 
caution. They have become obsessed by an idea, the 
idea of racial supremacy, of " Kultur " imposed by 
the sword in the interests of the inferior types. They 
burn and slay to redeem the world. Not since the 
Crescent came out of the desert with sword and flame 
has there been such a frenzy of fanaticism in which 
the passion of conquest is charged with the fervour of 
a fierce gospel of salvation. What is that gospel? 

Through the window of the bedroom in which the 
doctor has imprisoned me for a day or two, there 
streams with the October sunlight the sound of a boy 
whistling the " Marseillaise " as he passes by. I do 
not mention the fact because it is unusual, but because 
it is usual. It is one of the incidents of the war that the 
great hymn of Liberty and Democracy has become 
the most familiar sound on this side of the channel, 
and not in towns only, for it is as familiar in the 
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General von Bernhardi 

lanes of Buckinghamshire as it is in the streets of 
London. 

And I do not mention the fact as trivial, but as 
profoundly significant. It recalls the axiom of 
Fletcher of Saltoun about the songs of a people. It 
means that, with a sure instinct, the country has 
seized on the central fact of the struggle. The boy 
who is passing just now might not be able to give a 
very clear idea in words of what we are fighting about, 
but he knows that the heart of the matter is in the 
song that he whistles so lustily. And he is right. 

To make the point clear, let me recall the assertion 
attributed to Hauptmann that the German soldier 
goes into battle with a copy of Nietzsche as well as 
Homer and Goethe in his pocket. If he made that 
assertion he felt that he could give no better assur- 
ance of the greatness of Germany's cause and of the 
enlightenment and culture of her sons. Let us accept 
the statement for all it was intended to convey. We 
have our symbols : On the one side the soldier going 
to battle with Nietzsche in his pocket ; on the other 
the soldier going to battle with the " Marseillaise " on 
his lips. Now the " Marseillaise " sang Europe free. 
In that great song the spirit of human liberty, human 
equality, human brotherhood found deathless utter- 
ance. What is the alternative that Nietzsche offers 
us? If we understand that we shall understand the 
spiritual motives behind the war. 

Let us, however, first clear the ground of a pos- 
sible objection. Not Nietzsche, it will be said, but 
Treitschke, embodies the soul of Germany — Treitschke 
who made the Prussian State his religion, the House of 
Hohenzollern his divinity, and war the instrument 
of salvation. It is true that Nietzsche was the foe of 
nationalism, that he talked of a United Europe and 
" a good European," and that, while Treitschke's poli- 

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tical assertion of the doctrine of Might was filling his 
lecture room at Berlin, Nietzsche's books could hardly 
find a publisher. Nevertheless, it is Nietzsche who is 
the true prophet of the new religion. He is the fierce 
singer in the Prussian Israel. It was Treitschke's part 
to link the new religion to the State — to show that 
Prussia was the chosen people of the sword, the super- 
race of Nietzsche's vision. 

Now it is not easy to state with clearness the philo- 
sophy of the tragic genius whose whole career was an 
unhappy sequence of physical suffering, intellectual 
revolt, and mental disorder, and who spent the last 
eleven years of his life in a madhouse. He is as full of 
contradictions as Ruskin whom he resembles in so 
many respects — in his discursiveness, his ferocity, his 
passionate revolt, his personal quarrels, his mental 
distress. But just as through all the apparent con- 
tradictions of Ruskin the lamp of spiritual beauty 
shines undimmed, so through all the contradictions of 
Nietzsche the gospel of brute force runs like a thread 
of steel. Ruskin loved humanity: Nietzsche hated 
humanity. 

It is not an uncommon thing for the physically 
thwarted life to take revenge on itself by exalting 
physical violence and strength. Henley exhibited 
something of this paradox. But Nietzsche made 
Might his god. The universe for him had no moral 
significance. Life was a-moral and all the moral values 
associated with it were fictions which " the herd " had 
been able to impose on the individual for its pro- 
tection. Thus " truthfulness " is a device of the herd 
to make men express themselves by clear and constant 
signs instead of concealing their purposes; "un- 
selfishness " is a trick for benefiting the herd ; " pity " 
is a parasite that preserves that which is ripe for death 
— a parasite that defeats the first principle of our 
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General von Bernhardi 

humanity which is that " the weak and the botched 
shall perish." 

Against all this morality of the herd, invented 
for the protection of the weak and the unfit.. Nietzsche 
comes forward with his new scheme of values based 
on " the Will to Power." The universe is for the aristo- 
crat, for the strong man, for the bird of prey. " It 
is not surprising," he says, " that the lambs should 
bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but 
that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey 
for taking the little lambs." And then, pursuing this 
allegory, he shows how the lambs (i.e., the herd) call 
the bird of prey " evil " and that which is opposed 
to it (i.e., the lambs) " good," and so reach that 
" slave morality " which he sets out to overthrow. 

Not that he wants to get rid of the slaves. They 
are necessary to the aristocrat, for " Slavery is of the 
essence of Culture." The slaves may even preserve 
their morality among themselves. But that morality 
will have no meaning for the blonde masters, the 
elect, the " higher men " whose passion for Power 
wall be the one uncontrolled motive of action. These 
are emancipated from the wretched gospel of current 
moral values. Pity, justice, truth — these things are 
not for them. The desire for Power will drive them 
forward reckless of consequences. " An order of 
rank will be established, based upon real values. 
There will be no remorse in man's heart any longer." 
And out of this cruel, ruthless exercise of might, there 
will emerge the Superman, the goal of all the ages, 
the fruit of all the austere sacrifices that men must 
make to produce him. 

It is a little difficult to gather what he will be like, 
or whether he will be a man or a race of men. For 
sometimes Nietzsche, with that Napoleonic obsession 
which afflicts his type of deranged mind, suggested 

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only one colossal figure towering over life, while later 
he seemed to conceive a race of supermen, divorced 
from all " slave morality " and living like Pagan gods 
in free exercise of power without a purpose, except 
the purpose of fighting, the glory of action, the doing 
of great, fierce, cruel things. 

For their only creed is the creed of valour, their 
only passion the love of war. 

" Horribly clangs its silver bow; and although it 
comes like the night, war is nevertheless Apollo, the 
true divinity for consecrating and purifying States. 
... Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war? I 
say unto you : a good war hallows every cause. War 
and courage have done greater things than love of 
your neighbour. . . . Against the deviation of the 
State-ideal into a money-ideal the only remedy is war, 
and once again war, in the emotions of which this at 
any rate becomes clear, that in love to fatherland and 
prince the State produces an ethical impulse indica- 
tive of a much higher destiny." 

It follows from all this that, while Nietzsche hated 
democracy and socialism, he hated most of all Chris- 
tianity with its " slave morality " of pity, justice, 
truth, mercy, unselfishness, and its conception of 
God as the Deity of the sick, of " God degenerated 
into the contradiction of life instead of being its 
transfiguration and eternal Yea." To him, the son of 
the parsonage, Christianity is the triumph of the 
physiologically inferior people, of the slaves who, 
fearing their masters and wanting power, imposed 
this " curse," this " eternal blemish " on mankind. 
His proudest claim is that he is the Anti-Christ. 

With all its splendour of rhetoric, its prophetic 

vision, its shattering originality, its frequent and 

noble inspiration, the gospel of Nietzsche is the gospel 

of the general paralytic. Megalomania and extrava- 

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General von Bernhardi 

gant self-assertion are notorious symptoms of that 
disease. In the end Nietzsche became his own Super- 
man. His autobiographical Ecce Homo was a grotesque 
exaltation of his achievements, and he imagined 
himself now a famous criminal, now the King of 
Italy, now God. " Let us be happy," he would say. 
" I am God, I have made this caricature." And 
then, twenty -five years ago, he passed into the 
silence of the madhouse, from whence he never 
emerged alive. 

But his religion of Valour — the Will to Power — 
remained. He who had been utterly neglected in life 
became suddenly the prophet of that young Germany 
which Treitschke had been preparing to conquer the 
world. His books passed through innumerable edi- 
tions, his Zarathustra inspired Strauss' most famous 
work in which we may see the new gospel in the terms 
of music. And, not least significant, it is to Nietzsche 
that Bernhardi went for the text of that orange- 
covered book which unveiled Germany to the world 
last August. On the fly-leaf of that book is Nietzsche's 
saying that " War and courage have done greater 
things than love of your neighbour." In a dozen words 
it states the whole issue of the war. 

Now this triumph of Nietzsche unlocks the secret 
of Germany. He has not, of course, any more than 
Treitschke, created the Prussian spirit or the Prussian 
ambitions; but he has given them watchwords and 
a faith. He did not write for Prussia, which, indeed, 
was the object of his hate, and, so far from deifying 
the State, was the bitter enemy of nationalism. 
But Prussia has turned his teaching into its own 
channels. And that for a reason which is profoundly 
significant and worth considering. 

In that remarkable and eloquent book, Germany 
and England — in which enthusiasm for German ideals 

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and militarism is so strangely mingled with fear of 
Germany — the late Professor Cramb forecast the 
present conflict. In doing so he gave the modern 
German view of the great movement of the German 
spirit through the centuries. Alaric broke the might 
of Rome, but in conquering Rome the Teutons were 
themselves conquered, for they adopted Rome's 
religion and Rome's culture. Their native instinct 
for religion was diverted into a false direction. But 
having once adopted the new faith, Germany strove 
to live that faith, and for more than thirty generations 
she has struggled and wrestled to see with eyes that 
were not her eyes, to worship a God that was not her 
God, to live with a world vision that was not her 
vision, and to strive for a heaven that was not her 
heaven. But her spirit lived on. Always beyond the 
grave of Christ she saw the grave of Balder, and 
higher than the New Jerusalem the shining walls of 
Asgard and Valhalla. With Luther she flung off 
Rome, with her " higher criticism " she undermined 
Galilee, and now, at the opening of the twentieth 
century, " Germany, her long travail past, is reunited 
to her pristine genius, her creative power in religion 
and in thought." 

The faith of Galilee, the faith of renunciation, of 
pity, of love, the faith that scorns the flesh and looks 
beyond the grave is at last dethroned and the ancient 
religion of Valour, the religion of Odin, the War God, 
comes forth to battle, emancipated from the thraldom 
of fourteen centuries. In the light of this revelation 
we see with a new understanding that strange cult of 
Napoleonism which has dominated German thought. 
We have a new interpretation of that magic world 
of myth that Wagner's mighty genius created. These 
things were the foreshadowings of to-day. They 
announced the return of Odin to the earth. And the 
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General von Bernhardi 

gospel is fully revealed in that Bible of Nietzsche 
which is in the German knapsack: 

" Ye have heard how in old times it was said, 
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth ; 
but I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, for they 
shall make the earth their throne. And ye have 
heard men say, Blessed are the poor in spirit ; but I 
say unto you, Blessed are the great in soul and the 
free in spirit, for they shall enter into Valhalla. 
And ye have heard men say, Blessed are the peace- 
makers ; but I say unto you, Blessed are the 
war-makers, for they shall be called, if not the 
sons of Jahve, the children of Odin, who is greater 
than Jahve." 

And the children of Odin are not unworthy of their 
creed. Their word is a he and their path is a track 
of desolation and death. The " horned men " that 
Odin of old sent forth against the new religion of 
peace and mercy left no stain like that of Belgium 
to insult the light of day. The Odin of old was a god 
of fire and sword, but he did not cant of Culture. 
He burned, but he did not say, as the Frankfurter 
Zeitung said in commenting on the destruction of 
Rheims Cathedral, that war would bring a nobler 
form of art. He slew the weak and the helpless, but 
he did not say that he was making way for richer 
forms of life. The Paganism of Culture which 
challenges Christianity is a far worse thing than the 
Paganism of heathendom which Christianity over- 
threw. 

The Kaiser has taken Attila and his Huns as his 
model. But these horrors are not the work of real 
Huns. Attila did not talk of culture or call himself 
" the Scourge of God." He was a rapacious bar- 
barian and did not affect to be anything else. But 
Belgium has been desolated in cold blood, on calcu- 
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lated principles, by a nation of philosophers and 
intellectuals. It has been butchered and outraged 
not from lust or revenge or even from cruelty. It 
has been butchered on a nicely considered theory 
and according to the doctrines of a savage faith. 

And it is that faith with which we are concerned. 
For behind all the apparent and even real motives 
of the war — dynastic, commercial, racial, and so on 
— there is a profoundly spiritual motive. It is a 
conflict, not so much of nations as of ideals, not of 
kings but of religions. It will decide whether our 
civilisation is to rest on a material foundation or a 
moral foundation, whether it is to be governed by 
the calculations of the head or the intuitions of the 
soul, whether it is to be in its essence a spiritual or 
a mechanical force. 

In claiming that in this conflict of ideals it is we 
who have our faces turned towards the light, it is 
not suggested that we are free from the idolatry of 
Force. The astonishing triumph of the mind over 
matter in the last two decades has left its mark deep 
on this country. The loosening of the foundations of 
faith has been accompanied, perhaps hastened, by 
a material mastery of the forces of nature that was 
undreamed of a generation ago. We have learned to 
sail the sky and to send engines of death through 
the depths of the sea; we have chained the lightnings 
and made the pulses of the air the invisible messengers 
of our will; we have invented guns that carry death 
for twenty miles and explosives more terrible than 
any thunderbolt. All this growth of material power 
has been unchecked by an equivalent growth of 
moral power or social conscience, and the result is a 
certain tyrannous exploitation of self based largely 
on the possession of material power. The Prussian 
spirit is not confined to Prussia. It is everywhere. 
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General von Bernhardi 

That, and not the German people, is the ultimate 
enemy. The road-hog, who uses that hideous, bully- 
ing horn that sounds like a brutal curse on every- 
thing that impedes his path, is the symbol of the 
Prussian spirit in our midst. 

But we have not made brute Force a national idol, 
sustained by a philosophy and worshipped as a new 
religion. We may still broadly claim that wherever 
we have gone we have carried the spirit of freedom 
and the authority of the moral law. We tried the 
mailed fist once across the Atlantic and lost the 
United States and we have never tried it again. The 
Liberal faith saved Canada seventy years ago and it 
has saved the British Empire throughout. That is 
why Australia and Canada are sending their legions 
to us in our need — not grudgingly or of necessit}', 
but cheerful givers. " Thy father has sent his son 
to me: I'll send my son to him." 

Now the case is otherwise with Germany. In say- 
ing this do not let us forget to be just. After all, we 
are what our circumstances make us. We had the 
good fortune to inherit an island, with the inviolate 
seas for a defence and the free ocean as a pathway 
to all the world. Liberalism had a chance on such a 
soil. The Germans had the bad fortune to be cast 
in the midst of Europe, with Slavs to the East and 
Latins to the South and West. They lived with fear 
and survived by fighting. 

And the weapon that had given them freedom 
became the idol of their worship. They fell, in a 
national sense, under the spell of a monster who 
has made all their wonderful genius and their fine 
character subservient to his will. The doctrine of 
Force by which they had " hacked their way through " 
became their gospel. Prussia imposed it on the rest 
of Germany. Treitschke, the prophet of the cult, 

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preached it as ruthlessly against the inferior German 
States before the Federation as afterwards he preached 
it against other Powers. It ceased to be a means of 
defence and became the expression of the national 
spirit; and Bernhardi has stated the doctrine of 
purgation by war and the righteousness of un- 
provoked wars with the cold abstractness of a 
college don. 

The German people accepted the gospel as a 
necessity of their existence. They are of our own 
stock and in our land would have developed on our 
lines. But their position and their political develop- 
ment have placed them under the heel of militarism 
and at the mercy of the despotism that they hate 
but have been unable to destroy. The sense of 
enveloping danger, above all the sense of the vastness 
of the shadow of Russia have made them prisoners 
of the system that is the creation of the Prussian 
aristocracy and the cold-blooded philosophers of 
Might. 

Perhaps they might have broken the enchantment 
if they had not been surrounded by fear* There is a 
striking passage in the White Book that shows that 
in those thrilling days that preceded the war Sir 
Edward Grey felt that that fear was not baseless — 
the passage in which he undertook, if peace was pre- 
served, to work for an arrangement which would 
secure Germany against any menace of hostile action 
by Russia, France, or ourselves. It is worth thinking 
about that passage and the light it throws on the 
past. The war came out of the spirit of fear as well 
as the doctrine of Force. 

But it is with the latter that we now have to deal. 

It perverted all the energies of Germany to one 

terrific purpose — the purpose of making itself terrible 

in war. Its civil liberties were ground to powder by 

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General von Bernhardi 

an insolent caste. Its astonishing genius for organisa- 
tion became the instrument for military efficiency, 
and Bismarck's schemes of State Socialism were all 
governed by the twin purpose of making the people 
subservient at home and feared abroad. Even the 
nationalisation of the railways, admirable though its 
results have been, was designed not as a measure of 
social amelioration, but as a measure of military 
necessity. Every ingenuity of the science of destruc- 
tion has been developed with absorbing energy and 
no consideration of pity or humanity has been 
allowed to interfere with the decrees of the god of 
blood and iron. That deity has no bowels of com- 
passion. He grinds the small nations he has under- 
taken to protect under his iron heel and talks of a 
sacred treaty as " a scrap of paper." He strews the 
seas with his engines of death regardless of what 
disaster they may bring to the innocent. He flings 
his bombs from the sky upon the sleeping city, scorn- 
ful of women and children. He burns towns and 
villages and slaughters the old and the weak, not in 
anger or in lust, but according to an iron rule. He 
is merciless even with his own. He flings them in 
close formation on certain death. They must hack 
their way through or die. " Better to lose an army 
corps than change a plan." It is all Force, Force, 
Force, soulless and cruel and barbaric. It is divorced 
from all moral considerations, from mercy, from 
justice, from pity. It is an idol of iron that stands 
to-day in a sea of blood. 

Caught in the toils of the great machine that had 
become their master, the German people became its 
slaves, and under the influence of their professors, who 
have always been the intellectual instrument of the 
military tyranny, returned to the faith of Odin. The 
great democratic movement of 1848 had failed and 

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Bismarck had put the seal of despotism upon them. 
Denied the healthful expression of liberty, they found 
refuge in the doctrine of racial superiority. They 
could not free themselves, but they had a divine 
mission to enslave the world. It is a remarkable fact 
that the doctrine that the German nation were the 
chosen people of the earth — a doctrine which received 
its impulse from the war of 1870 — came originally 
from a Frenchman and that its chief exponent to-day 
is an Englishman. It was Count Gobineau, the French 
diplomatist, who first developed the idea of racial 
aristocracy and saw in the German people the 
conquering strain who should inherit the earth. The 
revolutionary spirit of France, with its assertion of 
the equality of men and its ideas of democracy, 
revolted his aristocratic instincts, and he found in 
Prussia his ideal not only of aristocratic government 
but of a super-race. He even discovered for himself 
a Teutonic origin. The idea of a super-race is not new. 
In a vague sense it is common to most nations; but 
in the western world it is only the Jews who have 
cultivated it as a creed, and it is significant that the 
Jew who has popularised Gobineau in this country has 
only one serious disagreement with his author, and 
that is that he should be so blind as to suggest that 
the Germans were the super-race when it was quite 
obvious that it was the Jews. 

Naturally the Gobineau doctrine was agreeable to 
the German people, and with the failure of the demo- 
cratic movement and the triumph of Bismarck it may 
be said that the idea of racial supremacy supplanted 
the Liberal idea. The Liberal movement practically 
ceased to exist, and though the socialistic gospel of 
Marx took deep root in the country it was always 
overshadowed and thwarted by the racial idea, which 
the Junkers and the militarists encouraged as an 
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General von Bernhardi 

antidote to democracy. To this gospel Nietzsche 
contributed the poison of the Will to Power, and 
Treitschke the historical groundwork and the practical 
aims, while within recent years an Englishman, Mr. 
Houston Chamberlain, a son-in-law of Wagner, has 
carried the doctrine to a point at which extravagance 
borders on farce. But it is farce which the Kaiser, 
who is not any more remarkable for humour than his 
people, evidently took with profound seriousness, for 
he made the last of Chamberlain's works, with its 
exaltation of the Hohenzollerns and its suggestion 
that Christ Himself, if He was not a German, was 
at least not a Jew, the subject of extravagant 
approval. 

All these influences that have been at work upon 
the soul of Germany are summarised in that book 
with which Bernhardi heralded the storm. It is not 
necessary here to recall the contents of that volume, 
with its naked assertion of the gospel of Might, its 
panegyrics on war as, in Treitschke 's phrase, " the 
medicine of God," its justification of the unprovoked 
war, its scorn for the " poisonous " peace movement, 
its exaltation of the Germans as the warlike race, its 
declaration that " France must be so completely 
overthrown that she can never get in our way again," 
and its frank proposals for sweeping the decadent 
English out of the path of the people who were 
destined for world dominion. The progress of the 
war has led General Bernhardi to attempt to explain 
himself away. We do not recognise the prophet of 
war and the preacher of its " biological " justice in 
the author of those gentle messages to the Americans. 
But his book is on record against him. In it is the 
whole gospel of Odinism against which the world is 
at war. 

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Professor Cramb, in his enthusiasm for the religion 
of Valour, seemed to think that Odin was coming to 
triumph, if not in Germany, perhaps then in England. 
He was mistaken. This world is not going back to 
barbarism. We cannot live under the sanction of 
Attila and his Huns and the clank of the sword 
of Zabern, even though that sword be in our 
own hand. 

This Europe that, only a few short months ago, 
seemed so secure and happy has grown up out of the 
darkness of the ages through suffering and sacrifice. 
Its spirit has been moulded by prophets and sages 
and inspired by poets and martyrs. It is not going 
to sacrifice all that it has won, to turn its back upon 
the light towards which it has travelled so painfully, 
at the bidding of Bernhardi's drill sergeant. We 
understand ve^ well the issue that is lit up by the 
flames of war. It is the issue of Paganism and 
Christianity. And in that issue is involved everything 
that, having, we treasure, or, having not, we seek — 
the liberties that men have wrung out of the agonies 
of a thousand years, the delicate growths of human 
and national relationships that have come to birth 
under the sanction of a humane religion, the spiritual 
equality which gives to the weak — even the weak 
State — the right to live his life without fear of the 
strong, the authority of the moral law in the affairs 
of men and nations, the supremacy of Right over 
Might, and of the spiritual over the material. 

All these things perish from the earth if Odin and 
his prophet Nietzsche and his disciple Bernhardi 
prevail. But they will not prevail. The world will 
not exchange the morality of Christ for the mailed 
fist of Odin, and the democracies of the earth which 
have so slowly and painfully won their way to some 
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General von Bernhardi 

measure of freedom will not yield to the Superman 
born on the threshold of a madhouse. 



The boy who goes by whistling the " Marseillaise " 
has the eternal truth on his lips. While that song rings 
in the heart of humanity Odin can never recover his 
ancient sway though his servant Krupp build guns 
as big as the Matterhorn. 



367 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 

AND BRITISH GENERALSHIP 

It is probable that no war since Bannockburn demo- 
cratised the battlefield has been so revolutionary in 
method and resource as that into which Europe was 
plunged last August. It was forty-four years since 
Germany and France had last been engaged in war- 
fare on any considerable scale; over twelve years 
since England had been at war with the Boer re- 
publics, ten years since Russia had been at war with 
Japan. The echoes of the Balkan wars, it is true, had 
hardly died away; but those wars, bloody though 
they were, had the character of the wars of the past. 
The movements were rapid, the decisions swift, and 
the resources and methods employed were familiar. 
It was only in the Russo-Japanese war that any 
suggestion was given that the art and conduct of war 
were on the eve of vital changes, consequent upon 
the dominating influence which artillery had estab- 
lished in the field. The battle of Mukden was the 
precursor of the siege warfare which, with its dull- 
ness and its ugliness, was to supersede the romantic 
war of swift surprise, crashing blow, and shifting 
scene. 

But in the ten years that had passed since Mukden 
there had been developments whose effect could only 
be to differentiate still further modern warfare from 
that of the past. The conquest of the air, the invention 
of wireless communication, the improvement in motor 
traction were among the most important of the 
factors which came into operation, and inasmuch as 
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Sir John French 



Sir John French 



the practice of warfare, like the practice of anything 
else, is largely governed by its tools it was clear that 
when war on the grand scale came it would be marked 
by new possibilities which could only be dimly 
imagined. What would be the relation of the mobile 
gun and the bomb-proof fort? Would Lord Syden- 
ham's view that the fortress was effete and that 
earthworks were the essential corollary of modern 
artillery be justified? What place would the cavalry 
have in future encounters? Would it be rendered as 
obsolete by the motor vehicle as the cabhorse had 
been rendered obsolete by the " taxi "? Would its 
function as the vision of the army be assumed by 
the aeroplane? What was the true function of the 
air in warfare? Would the airship prove to be an 
effective military instrument, or would the aeroplane 
with its superiority in numbers and mobility reduce 
it to a clumsy futility ? 

These were typical of the questions to which only 
practical experience could furnish decisive answers. 
But so far as the calculable elements were concerned 
the advantage was, of course, decisively with that 
power which had made preparation for war its 
supreme function. That advantage was not limited 
to the specifically military equipment which Germany 
had organised with such astonishing thoroughness. 
It extended to the whole field of the national life, 
every department of which was developed with a 
view to its effective co-operation for the purposes of 
war. The contempt which Germany had for the 
military potentialities of Great Britain was not un- 
reasonable. It was founded, not merely upon the 
negligible proportions of the British Army, but upon 
the fact that the whole conception of the state in 
this country was non-warlike and its organisation 
entirely industrial and pacific. We relied upon the 

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sea for our protection and still believed in the maxim 
of Chatham that " the Navy is the Standing Army 
of England " — a maxim in which a defensive and 
not an offensive attitude is implicit. Had the Prussian 
mind been more open to the teaching of history it 
would have understood, from such episodes as the 
American civil war, that great military resources may 
be latent in a non-military people; but it has been 
one of the fatal mistakes of the Prussians to calculate 
only on the visible and the material forces and to 
ignore the human and spiritual forces that they have 
challenged. 

But though, tested by the Continental scale, the 
British Army was negligible, there were two points 
in which it was incomparable. It was small in 
numbers, but it was great in experience. It was the 
only professional army in Europe, and, apart from 
the Russian, it was the only army that had had the 
supreme qualification of actual experience of war. It 
may be said with almost strict truth that when the 
German and French armies faced each other last 
August there was hardly a man on either side who 
had seen a shot fired in battle. The English Army, on 
the other hand, in addition to the qualities of the 
professional soldier who had served all over the world, 
had in it a powerful stiffening of seasoned men who 
had been through the South African War and had 
been inured to all the rough vicissitudes of battle. 

And the second point was even more vital. The 
British Army was generalled by men all of whom 
were familiar with the practice of war and whose 
merits had been discovered not in manoeuvres but 
on the battlefield. The importance of this fact cannot 
be over-estimated. It is one of the paradoxes of 
Lord Fisher that " disobedience is the whole art of 
war." " In peace," he will tell you, " you want a 
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Sir John French 



man who will obey orders. In war you want a man 
who knows when to disobey them. Nelson disobeyed 
Jervis at St. Vincent and won the battle ; he disobeyed 
at Copenhagen and bluffed the Danes into surrender." 
Perhaps it is a perilous maxim; but it is true that 
war is an art as well as a science and that one may 
have great success in the pedantries of manoeuvres 
and be discovered to be a great fool in the presence of 
realities on the battlefield. Now, except for a few 
men like Hindenburg, Pau, and Castelnau, who as 
youngsters took part in the campaign of 1870, none 
of the generals on either the French or the German 
side had ever been under fire. They were theorists of 
war. They were the product of manoeuvres and text- 
books. They might be good men, but they had to be 
taken on trust. And the result was what might have 
been expected. Von Moltke was deposed within two 
months of the beginning of the war, and on both 
sides there was a rapid displacement of inefficient 
generals. Forty disappeared on the French side 
alone. 

Now the case was different with the English. There 
was not an officer in high command in the Army who 
who had not spent a large part of his life in active 
service in the field. Many of them bore the witness 
of old battlefields on their persons; all of them 
carried the symbols of some act of valour or some 
display of military talent. They had fought in many 
fields, on the frontiers of India, in Afghanistan, in 
Burmah, in Somaliland, in Egypt, but chiefly in 
South Africa. In that great struggle they had learned 
the meaning of war and had tasted all its bitterness. 
It had humbled them, and in humbling them had 
made them better students and better soldiers. No 
one who went through the South African War emerged 
from it unpurged of military arrogance — that arro- 

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gance that is born in the classroom and dies on the 
battlefield. 

The saying that South Africa is the grave of reputa- 
tions is older than the second Boer War, but it was 
that war which gave it the significance that attaches 
to it to-day. Buller's failure, though most conspicuous, 
was only typical of what happened in the early stages 
of the war, and in the later stages Lord Roberts and 
Lord Kitchener, though more successful, cannot be 
said to have added to their reputations. There was, 
however, one exception to the depressing rule — one 
reputation which found in South Africa not a grave 
but a birthplace. Sir John French went into the war 
unknown to the world: he emerged from it with the 
most secure reputation as a fighting general in the 
British Army. This suggests no reflection on Lord 
Kitchener whose success has been that of the organiser 
of war rather than that of the general in the field. 

If we ask what was the source of that deep and 
confident faith in Sir John French which was the 
product of the war we shall find that it was not merely 
the almost unvarying success which attended him, 
but the sense that in him there worked an original 
faculty of a very considerable kind. Now originality 
in any walk of life is hard to achieve. It is most 
difficult of all to achieve in the military profession, 
in which the law of discipline makes the free play of 
the mind seem like the most dangerous of all heresies. 
Discipline and originality are natural enemies, but 
they are enemies that have to be reconciled if the 
highest efficiency of an army is to be realised. It was 
this necessity which haunted Bernhardi when he was 
showing Germany how it was to win the next war. 
Prince Biilow has said that the spirit of discipline, 
even without enthusiasm, had enabled Prussia to 
march to victory in the past; but Bernhardi, like 
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Sir John French 

Scharnhorst before him, saw that in the new con- 
ditions of war mere reliance upon the unquestioning 
discipline of the mass was fatal and he was never 
tired of preaching that, with discipline, there must 
be the element of individual initiative. 

If this element is important in the case of the men 
it is vastly more important in the case of the officer. 
But the sterilising dominion of precedent and tradi- 
tion in his case is most difficult to attack because it 
is founded not only in the idea of obedience but in 
professional pride. It is easy to confuse loyalty to 
the spirit of the profession, which should be constant, 
with loyalty to its methods, which should be varying. 
" It's a way we have in the army " becomes an easy 
formula for getting rid of thinking and for treating 
everyone who dares to think as a dangerous person. 

Now Sir John French is one of those men who are 
not terrorised by tradition. He has an independent 
life of the mind which enables him to shake himself 
free from conventional thought, and he encourages 
the same freedom in others. When he was appointed 
Chief of the General Staff in 1912 he issued a memor- 
andum inviting officers to contribute to the pages 
of the new Army Review and to give expression to 
original ideas even though they differed from the 
doctrines of the official text-books. He has the wisdom 
to see that war is both a science and an art — that it 
is necessary to equip the mind with all the science of 
war, with all that has been thought and done by the 
masters in the past and that it is equally necessary 
in action to be the master and not the slave of that 
science. Sir Evelyn Wood said recently that when 
he inspected Major French's regiment many years 
ago he asked a superior his opinion of the Major. 
" For ever reading military books " was the reply. 
And his sister, Mrs. Despard — under whose eye he 

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was brought up after the death of his parents — has 
borne similar witness to his life-long concentration 
upon the one theme that dominates his mind — the 
theory and practice of war. 

For, in spite of an early predilection for preaching, 
he has been a soldier all his life. It is true that in 
obedience to the parental example — for his father, 
Captain French, of Ripple Vale, Kent, had been an 
officer in the Navy — young French, in 1866, at the 
age of fourteen, joined the senior service and served 
four years as a naval cadet on the Britannia. But 
the natural genius of the lad prevailed, and in 1874 
he began his military career with a commission in the 
19th Hussars. It was here that his independence of 
mind began to show itself, not in assertive eccen- 
tricity (for he is the most modest of men and his 
genius consists in the possession of common sense 
in an uncommon measure), but in the fresh and 
original thought he brought to bear on his profession. 
His regiment was not in those days a smart affair. 
It was one of those, formed after the Indian Mutiny, 
in which only small men were enlisted and which, in 
consequence, were known as the " Dumpies." The 
atmosphere of the officers' mess in the 19th Hussars 
was no better and no worse than the average in those 
days of dry rot. The military calling was merely a 
phase of the sporting equipment of a gentleman, and 
drill and manoeuvres were rather dull and perfunctory 
incidents in an otherwise agreeable mode of life, 
while anything like the serious study of the science 
of war marked a man out as a curiosity, if not as 
rather a vulgar fellow. Soldiering was a sport which 
could only be degraded by study. And as for the 
cavalry, its chief function, as a witty cavalry officer 
said, was to give tone to what would otherwise be a 
vulgar brawl. It needed a man of strong will and 
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Sir John French 



clear ideas to cut across such ingrained habits of 
thought and to set up a new professional standard, 
and John French was the man for the task. His 
influence prevailed, and the subsequent reputation 
achieved by the 19th was chiefly due to his efforts. 

His success here and always was more enduring 
because it was won in such a human and unpre- 
tentious way. He has not the grim aloofness of com- 
manders like Wellington or Kitchener, nor does he 
cultivate the Napoleonic arts of flattery. But he 
succeeds nevertheless in conveying that impression 
which is essential to the great general — the im- 
pression that he has the secret of victory in him. 
Without that assurance an army goes into battle 
robbed of its most powerful asset. Sir John French 
conveys the impression, not by enveloping himself 
in an atmosphere of remoteness and mystery, but by 
giving the sense of a singularly sane, balanced, day- 
light mind, firm in its judgments, yet open to con- 
viction; masterful, yet without the fatal blemish of 
vanity or ambition ; instructed yet without the taint 
of the doctrinaire. He is, in a word, the ordinary man 
in an extraordinary degree, fearless of danger, im- 
perturbable in action, free alike from exaltations and 
despairs, cool when the temperature is highest and 
warm when the blast is coldest, and, in all circum- 
stances, human, generous, a little hot-tempered, and 
always comprehensible. One would be tempted to 
say that he was the beau ideal of the Englishman, 
but for the fact that he is Irish. 

But in spite of his high personal qualities and the 
universal affection with which he is regarded, his 
path has not been unobstructed. No man who thinks 
independently and acts on his thinking can expect 
that in a world governed by precedent — least of all 
can he expect it in an institution which like the Army 
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makes every rut sacred. He became known to the 
conventional as a man with rather heretical notions 
about the use of cavalry — for example, he taught his 
men that they might have to fight on foot — and he 
had the distinction (and, incidentally, the good 
fortune) to be passed over at a critical moment in 
his career by the late Duke of Cambridge to whom 
a new idea was perdition and the man who enter- 
tained it a peril. Even his successes were to the 
pedants gained by means so unorthodox as to rule 
him out as an unsafe man. Thus, when commanding 
the cavalry in the manoeuvres of 1897 he achieved a 
brilliant success, his tactics were severely assailed as 
unsound and as involving undue risks, and nomina- 
tion to the command of the cavalry in the Boer War 
was opposed on the ground that he was " inefficient 
to command in the field." Fortunately, General 
Buller had had experience of General French in 
Egypt, at Abu Klea and Metemneh, and he insisted 
on his appointment to the cavalry command. 

Now if one judged war as a science only, as the 
Germans do, and not as an art, as Napoleon did, 
there would have been a reasonable case against the 
selection of French. For though he has been one of 
the most careful students of war of his time and, 
when at the War Office as Assistant Adjutant-General, 
devoted himself daily to working out tactical problems, 
he is essentially a pragmatist in war. He knows that 
war is too irrational, too incalculable a thing to be 
governed by rules — that every situation is unpre- 
cedented, is made up of factors, human, material, 
moral, that have never occurred in the same relation 
before, that in the last resource it is judgment, 
inspiration, common sense, informed by science but 
not controlled by it, which must be in command. 
To put it in another way, it is not a man's theories 
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Sir John French 



that count but his personality. It was possible to 
condemn French on his work in manoeuvres because 
according to the rules he took too great risks, and 
manoeuvres having no reality could not demonstrate 
that those risks were warranted. Only actual war 
could reveal whether audacity and caution were in 
due equipoise. 

And that was the revelation of the Boer War in 
regard to Sir John French. It showed that he had 
the genius for seizing a situation swiftly and truly, 
that he was always master of the whole sum, not only 
the sum of his own resources, but the sum of his 
enemy's resources, that his risks, though they might 
ignore rules, never ignored facts. As an example, take 
the best known but not the greatest of his achieve- 
ments in the Boer War — the relief of Kimberley. 
When French hurled his cavalry division at the Boer 
lines he took risks which in manoeuvres would have 
been denounced as fatal. By every theory of the 
text-books he should have been destroyed. Instead, 
the fury, unexpectedness, momentum of the act 
carried him through the storm unscathed. The clouds 
of dust flung up by the flying feet of the horses 
enveloped the charge in obscurity, and the Boers for 
once lost their heads and fired confusedly. Their line 
was pierced, they fled in disorder, and Kimberley was 
relieved. It was the first great success of the war. 
It was achieved in the teeth of all doctrine, and on 
the basis of actual present conditions, the meaning 
and values of which only a swift and sure intuition 
could reveal. 

Or take that still greater, because more complex 
and sustained, feat at Koodoosrand Drift. French 
and his cavalry, worn out after the long action at 
Dronfield, were resting in the evening when news 
came that Cronje was fleeing to Bloemfontein with 
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all his force, and that French must cut him off at 
Koodoosrand Drift. On the face of it so great a task 
was physically impossible to the exhausted horses 
and tired men, but French is never overawed by the 
**• impossible." What does the soldier live for except 
to prove that the impossible is possible and snatch 
victory as the reward? " Impossible? Is that all? 
Then the sooner we set about it the better," is his 
attitude. By midnight he was moving; by nine 
o'clock in the morning his advanced patrol came in 
sight of the enemy crossing the Modder in a confused 
mass, and never dreaming of danger from the west. 
The apparition of French across the path was as 
startling as the descent of Montrose at Inverlochy, 
or of Stonewall Jackson at Manasses Junction. But 
Cronje was in overwhelming superiority, and it was 
only by the most audacious " bluff," by spreading 
his little force over a wide front and giving the 
impression of numbers that French was able to hold 
the enemy in check until the panting infantry under 
Kitchener came up from the east and sealed Cronje's 
fate. 

This incident disclosed qualities in French not less 
important than his brilliant daring — qualities which 
are proving invaluable in his present gigantic task. 
I refer to his unquestioning loyalty and his powers 
of endurance. Without them there would have been 
disaster in France. The co-operation of allies is 
always a delicate and perilous operation, and the 
relations of Sir John French and General Joffre were 
peculiarly susceptible to strain. French is not only 
a Field Marshal, and therefore Joffre 's superior in 
rank, but he entered the war with a reputation 
established on the field of battle — a reputation second 
to none in Europe — while his chief had had no 
experience of war on a great scale. Nevertheless, the 
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Sir John French 

English commander has given the world an example 
of perfect loyalty, not merely in deed and word, but 
in spirit. And his endurance has been no less in- 
valuable. It is not merely physical endurance. That, 
with his short, unromantic, but very serviceable 
figure, he possesses in an extraordinary degree. 
Weariness of body seems unknown to him. But even 
more important is his mental endurance. There is a 
touch of habitual depression in Kitchener, just a 
little sense of impending disaster. But French has 
the unconquerable cheerfulness of the man who lives 
in the moment, bends all his faculties to the immediate 
task, and refuses to be terrorised by what is before 
or behind. It is not that he is without imagination. 
In the military sense he has abundance of that quality. 
It is that he is free from the temperamental moods 
of the artist and has that constancy of mind which 
is the first essential of the man of action. This 
quality was exhibited in a supreme degree in the first 
battle of Ypres. His generals came to him in despair. 
Their men were at the last gasp. " Think of the 
enemy," he said, "they are at their last gasp too. 
Hold on." And he was right. The next day the great 
thrust at Calais had collapsed and the most momen- 
tous battle since Waterloo had ended in the victory 
of the British. 

It was this sense of stability and balance that 
marked him out for high command. The brilliant 
cavalry officer is not often a brilliant commander. 
His task is incidental rather than constructive, and 
his success comes from the impetuous rush of the 
spirit rather than from the steady glow of the mind. 
French's rare merit is that he combines the momentary 
inspiration of the cavalry leader with the power of 
surveying a large and complex situation from a 
detached point of view. In a word he has the power 
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of thought as well as the instinct for action. This 
was shown in a very decisive way by the operations 
which he carried out in front of the Colesberg position. 
From the military point of view, those operations 
were the most conspicuous success of the war. It 
was in them that French found himself and the 
military world discovered a leader of original power. 
During three months, by every art of finesse and 
" bluff," by skilful mystification, by caution that 
suddenly changed to audacity and audacity that 
changed to caution, by delicate calculations of time, 
of material values and of moral factors, he held in 
check a force often as much as five times greater 
than his own, a force, moreover, commanded by 
leaders of the high quality of Delarey and De Wet. 
It may be said that it was before Colesberg that 
French learned the art of generalship on the great 
scale and served his true apprenticeship for the most 
momentous task ever imposed upon a British General 
in the field. 

It was there that we first saw in operation that very 
rare combination of qualities which his unassuming 
personality contains — the steadiness of mind that 
supported him under the tremendous strain of the 
retreat from Mons ; the instinct for a military situa- 
tion which led him to propose the transfer of the 
British Army from the Aisne to Flanders, a transfer 
that only just succeeded in defeating the lunge at 
Calais; the calculated daring that made him, when 
he arrived in Flanders, take the risk so brilliantly 
justified of spreading out his line to a perilous tenuity ; 
the unfailing cheerfulness of one who, dismissing fears 
of the future or regrets for the past, lives deliberately 
in the possibilities of the present, the untiring body 
and the constant, bull-dog purpose. Doubtless, he 
makes mistakes. There is an impression that he 
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Sir John French 

sometimes demands impossible things of his generals, 
as in the case of General Smith-Dorrien before Ypres ; 
but the time has not come for a verdict upon these 
criticisms. 

The sense of loyalty which I have emphasised as 
one of the conspicuous traits of Sir John's French's 
character is not confined to the professional sphere. 
His loyalty as a soldier has its counterpart in his 
loyalty to the civil authority. It is an open secret that 
had his opinion been followed there would have been 
short shrift with the potential rebels of the Curragh 
Camp. The final announcement that the soldier 
whose fine instinct of loyalty to constituted authority 
was the one redeeming feature of that unhappy 
business had found it impossible to reconcile honour 
with the withdrawal of his resignation- seemed to 
leave the country face to face with an unprecedented 
danger. Only Mr. Asquith's dramatic assumption at 
that moment of the Secretaryship of War saved the 
situation. 

That episode seemed like the unworthy eclipse of 
a distinguished career. Five months later he was 
saving the liberties of Europe by a retreat that has 
few parallels in the history of war. When it was 
known that he was to command the Expeditionary 
Force there was no dissentient left in all the land. 
He was the obvious choice, and events have justified 
it. He has his defects, of course, the chief of which 
is a certain temperamental indolence. But his merits 
are great and, without any picturesque qualities, he 
has the supreme quality of always being adequate to 
the occasion. 



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SIR IAN HAMILTON 

It would not be easy to find a more striking con- 
trast to Sir John French in externals than that 
furnished by the general who has been given the 
command of the Dardanelles expedition. Sir John 
French does not touch the imagination with any 
sense of romance. He is, like General Joffre, an 
entirely prosaic and matter-of-fact figure whose 
high merit is the possession of common qualities in 
an uncommon degree and in that equilibrium which, 
if not genius, is in practical affairs often better than 
genius. He represents the business of war. Sir Ian 
Hamilton, on the other hand, suggests the romance 
of war. In temperament and appearance he is the 
cavalier, and a very little effort of the imagination 
is needed to picture him fighting a forlorn battle for 
the helpless Stuart cause. He is without the tragic 
seriousness of Montrose, perhaps without that depth 
and intensity that give Montrose so enduring a hold 
on the imagination; but it is the spirit of Montrose 
that he recalls in his mingling of the poet and the 
adventurer, and if there is any distrust of him at all 
it proceeds from the pedestrian fear that a man who 
looks so much like an embodiment of romance cannot 
at the same time possess the humdrum qualities of 
the organiser of victory. 

The suspicion is natural. The plain man dis- 
approves of wit in his politicians and of poetry in 
his soldiers. He likes his men of affairs to talk in 
monosyllables and to preserve a dour and inflexible 
seriousness. Wellington was trusted all the more 
because he was so curt and said " Damn " with such 
vehemence, and the prestige of Joffre and Kitchener 
to-day is largely a tribute to their incomparable gift 
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Sir Ian Hamilton 

of silence. Now Sir Ian Hamilton has not only 
committed the fatal error of publishing poetry, but 
he carries in every lineament the impress of the poet 
and of the man of romantic ancestry and taste. He 
is the painter's soldier, and with his tall spare figure, 
his mobile, aristocratic features and dark eye gives 
the impression that his main function in life is to 
adorn the walls of the Royal Academy and then to 
die an heroic death on behalf of some mistaken 
loyalty, and with a cavalier jest upon his lips. And 
there is certainly no doubt that the natural instinct 
of the man is a chivalrous intrepidity rather than a 
calculating caution. The withered hand and wrist 
serve as a reminder of this, for they are a souvenir 
of that memorable day thirty years ago when the 
young lieutenant of the 92nd Highlanders shared in 
the disaster on Majuba Hill, and when he gave the 
first conspicuous expression of the stuff that was 
in him. 

It was not the first occasion on which he had been 
under fire, for he had served in the Afghan War of 
1878-80 and had taken part in the operation at Cabul 
in 1879. But it was the first occasion that discovered 
the spirit of the young Highlander. The day was 
going badly for the English and only desperate 
remedies could save it. In the duel of marksmanship 
the Boer farmers were easily superior, and Ian 
Hamilton, with the Highlander's passion for the 
charge surging in his veins, saw that the one hope 
was the bayonet. With the courage born of a vision 
denied to the unhappy commander, Hamilton 
approached Sir George Colley. " Forgive my pre- 
sumption, sir," he said, " but will you let the Gordon 
Highlanders charge with the bayonet? " " No pre- 
sumption, young gentleman," replied Colley. " We'll 
let them charge us: then we'll give them a volley 
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and charge." It is not difficult to conceive the feel- 
ings with which Ian Hamilton returned to his men, 
and witnessed the disaster which might have been 
averted by intrepidity and courage. 

But his charge was to come nevertheless. Nearly 
twenty years had elapsed and once more the British 
were facing the Boers on a hill not far from the 
scene of the earlier exploit. It was January 6th, 1900, 
and on that day the fate of Ladysmith and of the 
British Army besieged there hung in the balance. 
In the darkness the Boers had stolen up the sides 
of Waggon Hill, and on the crest of that hill, amid 
a thunderstorm of unusual intensity, there was waged 
a battle not less pregnant with results than that of 
Majuba, for had it been lost South Africa itself could 
hardly have been saved. Across the plateau the 
armies faced each other, firing at point blank range, 
and often obscured by the torrential rain. As at 
Majuba the Boers had the advantage with the rifle, 
but on this occasion they had to deal with the young 
lieutenant, a lieutenant no longer, but a general with 
the power to put his faith in the bayonet into practice. 
For long the battle was in doubt, but then came the 
moment for which Ian Hamilton had waited, and 
the charge of the Devons swept the Boers from the 
hill and saved Ladysmith and its army. And though 
it was not the 92nd who had given him his revenge, 
there was to come a day later in that war when at 
Doornkop his favourite Gordons heard his order to 
charge, and passing amid a rain of bullets across the 
open veldt stormed with fixed bayonets the further 
slope, carried the position, and won as proud a victory 
as any in all their famous history. And that night, 
when the stars came out and the camp fires twinkled 
on the veldt, Ian Hamilton visited his old comrades 
of the regiment he was born in and thanked them 
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Sir Ian Hamilton 

for the gallantry that would ring through far away 
Scotland on the following day. 

But though he has the Highlander's love of the 
charge, it would be a profound mistake to regard 
him simply as a brilliant adventurer of the battle- 
field. He is that, but he is more than that. When 
Lord Roberts, not long before his death, was asked 
whom among the generals of the British Army he 
regarded as the ablest commander in the field, he 
replied, " Ian Hamilton." The judgment was dis- 
putable, but not indefensible, and it was founded not 
on Hamilton's audacity, but on his knowledge and 
on his coolness in directing the complex movements 
of the battlefield. He has, like General French, been 
a serious student of war all his life. He comes of a 
soldier strain, for his father once commanded the 
92nd Highlanders and an ancestor of his was aide- 
de-camp to the great Marlborough, and his natural 
aptitude for war has been cultivated not merely by 
experience in the field, but by familiarity with con- 
tinental methods. As a youth he went to Germany 
and from the old Hanoverian, General Dammers, 
acquired the strategy that had made the Prussian the 
military masters of Europe. And since then he has 
learned to apply and qualify that science by the 
actual experience of war in many fields — in India, in 
Egypt, in South Africa. 

He has not the imperturbable quality of Sir John 
French, for his temperament is that of the artist, and 
he once confessed, half jestingly but with a certain 
seriousness, that he had " never gone into battle 
without being in a blue funk and wondering how on 
earth he was to get through." But that element of 
nervous tension is often the most dangerous in action. 
It means intellectual speed and passion, and when, as 
in the case of Ian Hamilton, that motion is controlled 



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by a cool head we have the elements of a great general. 
The operations in Gallipoli are as formidable as any 
that a military commander has ever had to face. 
They call for daring, for swift inspiration, but they 
call also for caution and calm judgment. On the first 
gate of Busyrane there was inscribed the words, 
" Be bold; " on the second, " Be bold and ever more be 
bold;" on the third, "Be not too bold." They are 
the invisible inscriptions on the gates of the Dar- 
danelles. There is confidence that Sir Ian Hamilton 
has the vision to see them and understand their 
mingled warning and challenge. 



SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON 

One other type of British generalship calls for 
remark. In many respects the most significant figure 
in the British Army to-day is General Sir William 
Robertson. He is a man of whom the public hears 
little, but for sheer intellectual force he has perhaps no 
rival. The measure of his genius may be understood 
from the fact that he is a " ranker." It is long since 
Gladstone abolished purchase in the army; but the 
abolition of purchase did not mean the democratising 
of the commands. It only meant that it was possible 
for a man of brains to secure a commission when it 
was too late for his talents to win a field for their 
exercise. The officering of the British Army was still 
an aristocratic prerogative, safeguarded by the 
conditions of the service. General Robertson, it is 
true, is not the first " ranker " to attain the rank of 
general. Hector Macdonald was also a " ranker," 
but the qualities that brought that tragic hero to 
greatness were the qualities of the fighting man. The 
remarkable fact about General Robertson is that he 
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Sir William Robertson 

has won his way to distinction by the qualities of 
his mind. He has brought into the Army the rare 
element of abstract thinking — that learning of which 
we in the past have had too little and the Germans 
apparently too much. That he is a gallant soldier 
goes without saying, for although born in Lincoln- 
shire, he comes of that fighting stock, the Clan 
Chattan, memorable to every reader of Scott. And 
he has seen active service in India and in South 
Africa and was wounded in Chitral. But it is in the 
lecture room and the study and not in the field that 
the man who enlisted in the 16th Lancers nearly 
forty years ago has won his unique distinction. He 
discovered a genius for languages, including Indian 
dialects, and this paved his way to notice. And once 
he had got his foot on the ladder his progress was 
irresistible, for he revealed an understanding of the 
science of war that impressed all who came in contact 
with him, and his ultimate appointment as Com- 
mandant of the Staff College at Camberley gave the 
Army the rare experience of an incomparable lecturer. 
To-day there is no officer in the British Army who 
is listened to with such respect as the former private 
of the 16th Lancers. As Chief of the Staff to Sir 
John French he is in his true place as the scientific 
adviser and thinker of the campaign. 



2 8 7 



SIR JOHN JELLICOE 

When describing the birth of the all-big-gun ship 
and the opposition it had to meet, Sir John Fisher 
used to say: " I took care that my committee of 
experts who had to give their judgment on the idea 
should not consist of men whose day was done, but 
of the young men who had the rope round their neck, 
the men who would have to walk the plank themselves 
for every mistake they made." 

Among those men he did not fail to include Captain 
Jellicoe, for not the least conspicuous quality of the 
First Sea Lord is his power of personal valuation. 
The all-embracing glance of that full, small-pupilled 
eye, at once so ruthless and so genial, picks men out 
with a swift decisiveness from which there is no 
appeal. In this man he discerns strength; in that 
man, weakness. He takes the one — for the other 
he has no use, though his coat of arms have 
half the quart erings of Debrett. It is not only the 
revolution he worked in the material, the disposition, 
the equipment, the strategy of the Navy that is Lord 
Fisher's claim to distinction; hardly less important 
was his influence on the personnel of the service. 
He modernised the ship, but he also modernised the 
officer. He found the Navy in the grip of a hoary 
tradition; he brought it under the inspiration of an 
alert and living intelligence. 

And among the instruments of his aims, no one 
has been more trusted or more prominent than the 
Admiral who is charged with the most momentous 
task that has fallen to the lot of any sailor in our 
annals. It is a quarter of a century since Captain 
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Sir John jellicoe 



Fisher's roving eye picked him out. Lord Ripon 
had discovered Fisher four or five years before, and 
had made him Director of Ordnance, and it was with 
Captain Jellicoe as his assistant in this department 
that the association began of the two great seamen 
whom history will link together as it links St. Vincent 
and Nelson — for it was St. Vincent's reforms that 
made Trafalgar possible. 

But it required no exceptional gifts of intuition to 
discover Jellicoe. There is that about this small 
alert man, with the clear, frank eye, the tight-lipped 
mouth that falls away in lines which seem equally 
ready to harden with decision or soften with good 
humour, that commands attention. His face, in 
Stevenson's phrase, is a certificate. It suggests a 
spacious, mobile understanding, breadth of judgment, 
and large reserves of patience, good humour, confi- 
dence. He is not formidable with the thunderous 
gloom of Lord Kitchener or the sardonic lightnings 
of Lord Fisher. There is about him much more of 
the quality of Sir John French, the quality of the 
plain man, human and friendly in his attitude to the 
world, but with his emotions under the control of a 
firm will; wholly free from vanity or eccentricity, 
seeing things with a large simplicity and compre- 
hension, governed not by temperamental moods or 
inspirations that may be false, but by the calculations 
of an acute, dispassionate, singularly serene mind. 
He carries with him what one may call the candour 
of the sea, that feeling of a certain elemental directness 
and veracity common to men who spend their lives 
far from towns, under a wide sky and in companion- 
ship with the great natural forces that do not lie 
and that cannot be deceived. 

Here, you feel, is one who has cleared his mind of 
illusions, who gives you the truth and demands the 

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truth. He will have no pleasant falsities. " Things 
and actions," he seems to say with another famous 
man, " are what they are, and their consequences 
will be what they will be. Why, therefore, should we 
desire to be deceived? " 

This foundation note of veracity is illustrated 
by an incident which occurred during the ill-fated 
expedition of Admiral Seymour, which went at the 
urgent summons of Sir Claude MacDonald to relieve 
Peking at the time of the Boxer riots in 1900. In 
that expedition, which, though it represented eight 
nations, only consisted of a little more than 2000 
men, Captain Jellicoe, the Admiral's Flag Captain, 
acted as Chief of Staff, and at the battle of Peitsang 
he was wounded so dangerously that the doctor 
of the flagship despaired of his life. While he lay in 
this condition, he sent for a fellow officer, who has 
told in the Pall Mall Gazette what followed : 

" I went down immediately, and found him suffering severe 
pain from his wound, pain made the worse by the utter misery 
of the surroundings and by the uncertainty of everything. 
He wanted to know what I thought of things. Foolishly, 
perhaps, I tried to make the best of them, and told him that 
I thought we were doing very well, and that there was no 
doubt at all of our ability to cut our way back to Tientsin or 
even to the coast, supposing the foreign settlement to have 
fallen. I do not think I shall ever forget the contemptuous 
flash of the eyes he turned on me, or the impatient remark: 
' Tell me the truth; don't lie! ' " 

This passion for the naked truth is not merely the 
instinct of a fundamentally honest man. It is not 
uncommon to find a flawless veracity associated with 
extreme dulness and a fatal bigotry. But Admiral 
Jellicoe's respect for truth is intellectual as well as 
moral. It is an expression of those rare mental gifts 
which have made him a marked man in the Navy 
from the time when, as a cadet, he came out of the 
Britannia the first of his year by an unusual percent- 
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Sir John Jellicoe 

age of marks and the winner of all the prizes. This 
preliminary evidence of his gifts of mind was sustained 
at every subsequent test — by taking three first-class 
certificates in his examination for sub-lieutenant, and 
by winning the prize of £80 for gunnery at the Royal 
Naval College. 

The last - mentioned achievement was prophetic. 
In the great scheme of modernising the Navy, which 
Lord Fisher completed so opportunely, it will be said 
that the most important phases were the changes in 
disposition, in strategy, and in construction. And 
yet, truly seen, it might be said that these things were 
but means to an end. Ships, after all, are only gun 
carriages. It is the gun and its use for which every- 
thing else is a preparation. And it is the revolution 
in guns and gunnery that is the key of the supremacy 
that means so much to us to-day. 

In that revolution three men have been primarily 
concerned. Lord Fisher, with that instinct for the 
centre of things which never fails him, began his 
career by writing on gunnery. Sir Percy Scott 
made the all - big - gun ship possible by his inven- 
tion of the central fire control system. Sir John 
Jellicoe completed the triumvirate. He was Director 
of Naval Ordnance at the critical moment. He was 
already known as one of the greatest gunnery experts 
in the Navy owing to his achievements while in 
command of the Drake, and Sir John Fisher brought 
him to the Ordnance Department when his plans 
were ripe for the great transition to the Dreadnought 
era. It was the sympathy, understanding, and 
enthusiasm which Captain Jellicoe gave to Sir Percy 
Scott that made the work of that original and 
inventive mind effective. 

Nor did he give sympathy and enthusiasm only. 
He brought to the task original thought and an 

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activity of mind that worked an unparalleled reform 
in the gunnery equipment and efficiency of the Navy. 
Within a year of his appointment as Director of 
Ordnance, he had raised the percentage of hits out of 
rounds fired from 42 to over 70. In other words, he 
had increased by more than a third the fighting value 
of the British Navy, and that without a keel being 
added to its composition. 

It is a favourite, half- jocular, half -serious, saying 
of Lord Fisher's, as he points to this or that fact that 
has worked to the advantage of this country : " Didn't 
I say that we are the Lost Tribes of the chosen 
people? " One can imagine him pointing to Admiral 
Jellicoe as a proof of his theory. For if any one might 
claim to have been preserved by an invisible hand for 
great ends, it is the Admiral who, perhaps more than 
any other single man, has the destiny of the world 
in his keeping to-day. 

Thrice he has escaped death when death seemed 
to have him fast — in China, as I have indicated; off 
Gibraltar, in 1886, when he commanded a gig, manned 
by volunteers, that went to the rescue of the crew of 
a steamer stranded on a sandbank, and when the gig 
capsized in the heavy seas and he was washed 
ashore; most conspicuously in the Mediterranean, 
in 1893, on the day when Sir George Tryon sent his 
flagship Victoria to its doom. Jellicoe was the com- 
mander of the flagship. 

It is not necessary here to recall the facts of that 
terrible disaster. Tryon's mistake is for ever inex- 
plicable. What we know is that Captain Bourke 
did his utmost to counter the Admiral's fatal order. 
Had the commander been present to reinforce his 
objections, perhaps the calamity would have been 
avoided. 

But the commander was not present. "He, poor 
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Sir John Jellicoe 

fellow, was below and in bed from fever/' said Admiral 
Sir G. Phipps Hornby, in his article on the disaster 
in the Fortnightly. " He was called to get up before 
the ship sank. " He got up; but, instead of going 
up to save himself, he went below to hurry up any 
one who might be there. When the ship foundered, 
he came to the surface necessarily in a state of 
exhaustion. Fortunately, a midshipman helped and 
supported him." 

That midshipman certainly deserves a memorable 
place among the instruments of fate. For it is 
doubtful whether any life more necessary, not to this 
country only, but to the world, was ever snatched 
from the jaws of death. How necessary we only 
fully understood twenty-one years later, in the 
tremendous hour when the nation realised that the 
Fleet alone stood between it and annihilation. 

It would be unjust to suggest that there was no 
other admiral adequate to the task, but it is just and 
true to say that there was no other admiral so 
indisputably and variously equipped for the task. 
Sir A. K. Wilson is doubtless a more profound 
strategist, a greater abstract thinker. But he had 
passed out of the active service, and, moreover, he 
had nothing of the versatility of the younger man. 
He hated the administrative side of the service, and 
would suggest, with the exquisite modesty that made 
him so delightful, that this or that department had 
never had a more incompetent head than he had been. 

Now Sir John Jellicoe has that rapid and adaptable 
type of mind that is at home in all tasks, that is at 
once comprehensive and minute, happy in thought 
and in action, at the desk or on the quarter-deck. 
Doubtless he had special aptitude for the sea, due 
to the tradition of a sea-going family. For not only 
is he the son of a sailor, his father, Captain John H. 

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Jellicoe, having been for many years Commodore of 
the fleet of the R.M.S.P.; but another of his kin was 
that Admiral Philip Patton who was Second Sea 
Lord at the time of Trafalgar. But you feel that 
so vigorous and agile an intellect would have 
achieved success in any calling, and that it is only 
an accident that made him a great seaman instead 
of a great engineer or a brilliant lawyer. He had 
run through the whole gamut of the Navy with a 
swift apprehension of the parts and the whole, and 
at fifty-five embodied more than any one, except his 
chief, the spirit, practice, and thought of the modern 
navy. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance 
of this fact. The modern navy is the most gigantic 
speculation in history. All the axioms of the past 
have been reversed or vitiated. Steam and steel, guns 
and explosives, torpedoes and submarines, mines and 
aeroplanes, have changed the whole character of the 
problems of sea warfare. Its theories are based, not 
upon experience, but upon thought; so much so 
that even at this moment no man can say whether 
the little submarine has not made the great modern 
battleship as obsolete as Nelson's Victory. 

In these circumstances, the supreme need at the 
helm was a mind wedded to no antiquated assump- 
tions, familiar with all the incalculable factors, quick 
to seize the meaning of every fact and to correlate it 
with the strategic and tactical requirements — in 
short, a mind, mobile, modern, unprejudiced, which 
faced the unknown with the keenest vision, the most 
instructed judgment, and the readiest accessibility 
to ideas. In all this Sir John Jellicoe was without a 
rival. 

In the mind of one masterful man he had for years 
been marked out as Admiralissimo when the time 
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Sir John Jellicoe 



came, and the way that masterful mind cleared the 
obstacles from the path of this man of genius but small 
social influence, will one day make a fascinating page 
in the history of the Navy and of the war. 

The conclusive proof of his fitness for the immense 
burden imposed upon him came, fortunately, on the 
eve of the struggle. He commanded the Red Fleet 
during the manoeuvres of 1913. They were carried 
out in strict secrecy, but it is known in service circles 
that the result was something much more than a 
victory 7 for Admiral Jellicoe. 

It was a victory not merely brilliant, but charged 
with a significance that can only be described as 
startling. When it was over, it left this man of the 
pleasant, alert manner, the clear, terse speech, and 
the direct yet kindly eye, the indisputable choice 
when the day came that was to bring all the specula- 
tions of Whitehall to the test of battle. 

In that ordeal many doctrines will be found to be 
effete, many calculations will prove unsound, many 
truths will turn out to be falsities. But there are two 
certainties that will survive all tests — the gallantry 
of the men and the genius of their commander. 



295 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 

AND THE GERMAN DEMOCRACY 

There have been many iron crosses distributed in 
Germany since August last. They have doubtless 
been given to brave men for brave deeds. But the 
bravest man in Germany has had no iron cross, and 
if he has escaped the martyr's cross it is only because 
the government dare not risk the consequences. For 
Karl Liebknecht might be even more dangerous 
dead than alive. The news of his execution or even 
of his imprisonment would be as disastrous to the 
Kaiser as the loss of a pitched battle. It would send 
through the trenches a chill reminder of that other 
war that is temporarily suspended — the war for the 
liberties of the Prussian people. 

For there are two kings in Potsdam. There is the 
Kaiser who reviews his legions on the parade ground 
before the Old Palace and there is Karl Liebknecht 
who gathers his legions in the streets. His election 
to the Reichstag as the Socialist representative of 
the Kaiser's own borough in 1912 was the most bitter 
insult the Kaiser ever received from his people. It 
was as though Windsor had returned a Republican 
to Parliament. The Kaiser's sons ostentatiously led 
the way to the polling booth in the early morning, 
but at night the people of Potsdam had elected old 
Wilhelm Liebknecht 's son as their democratic king. 

There has been much scornful criticism of the 
docilit}? with which the German Socialists have 
answered the call of the Prussian drill sergeant. See 
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Karl Liebknecht 

what nonsense this Socialism is, it is said. See how 
it all vanishes into thin air at the sound of the trum- 
pet. And see what an admirable institution is that 
Prussian drill sergeant. Oh, for a drill sergeant like 
him in England, a drill sergeant who at the word of 
command can bring the whole working class to heel 
and make them the obedient instruments of a trium- 
phant aristocracy. " Yes," said Carlyle long ago, 
" the idea of a pig-headed soldier who will obey orders 
and fire on his own father at the command of an 
officer is a great comfort to the aristocratic mind." 

And it must be admitted that there is ground for 
this comfortable conviction of the value of militarism 
as a strait - waistcoat for an insurgent democracy. 
The obedience with which the German Socialists, 
after marching for generations to the polls against 
the Prussian junkers and their military machine, fell 
into step behind the junkers at the call of the bugle 
seems to reduce all their agitations and theories to 
idle wind. It encourages writers like the enigmatic 
Dr. Dillon to say, as he says in the Contemporary 
Review, that there is nothing to choose between the 
government and the people. But that is to take a 
shallow view of the facts. The storm fell upon the 
Socialists of Germany as suddenly as upon us. They 
knew less of the causes of that storm than we knew. 
They saw only one thing, as we did, that their country 
was in danger; and they resolved, as we did, to 
subordinate everything to the instant duty of saving 
it from ruin. 

We can illustrate the position with a parable. You 
may quarrel very heartily with your family about 
the internal economy of your house ; but if the house 
is in flames you will pretermit those quarrels and join 
forces to put out the flames. You may suspect that 
the fire is due to the mischievous stove arrangements 

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against which you have waged a vain struggle; but 
that will not make you less eager to quench the fire. 
When it is quenched you will have no more nonsense 
about that stove; but for the moment you are in 
another realm of ideas and on another plane of action. 
The isolation of Karl Liebknecht, therefore, is more 
apparent than real. Millions of people in Germany 
are thinking his thoughts, and though he alone is 
uttering them to-day they will be the governing 
thoughts of Germany to-morrow. The fact that he is 
free to utter them is in itself a portent. It is the most 
decisive evidence of the power of that other motif that 
runs through the German nation counter to the 
triumphant motif of Bernhardism just as in the 
great imagery of Tannhduser the Pilgrims' Chorus 
runs counter to the sensuous flood of the Venusberg 
music. We have forgotten that other motif. We see 
Germany only by the torch of Bernhardi. It could not 
be otherwise. In the fierce stress of battle we have no 
time to discriminate, and we brand the whole German 
nation with the scarlet letter. We know it is false; 
we know that Burke's great saying about the indict- 
ment of a nation is as true of Germany as of any 
other people ; but for the moment we are living under 
the dominion of a tyrannic passion which repudiates 
the reason almost as though it were a traitor. I 
confess that, with every desire to be sensible, I am a 
little unhappy when I find that the barber or the 
waiter into whose hands I may have fallen addresses 
me in the accents of Germany. I know the poor 
wretch is as innocent of this great crime as I am, I 
know that his life in these days must be a hell — and 
yet . . . well, I wish I had fallen into other hands. 
And so with the music of Germany. Even that 
intimate speech of Schumann — the most brotherly 
and tender language in all the realm of art — seems 
298 



Karl Liebknecht 

like the speech of one with whom there is a tragic 
estrangement. 

But the other motif will return and even through the 
discords of war we may hear it like an undertone. 
The " Eye Witness " tells us of the German officer 
who, even in captivity, preserves his insolent bearing. 
He is the symbol of the Germany we are fighting, 
and that we are going to beat. But Liebknecht is 
the symbol of the Germany with whom we are going 
to be reconciled. He stands there, the bravest man 
in Europe at this moment, challenging and resisting 
the whole current of the war. And, as I have said, 
the significant thing is that he is still free. It was 
different in 1870 when his father, Wilhelm Lieb- 
knecht, one of the founders of German Social Demo- 
cracy, was clapped in prison together with Bebel, for 
resisting in the Reichstag the proposal to annex 
Alsace-Lorraine. Karl has gone much further than 
his father went. It was he who, when the German 
Press was fanning the flame of hatred against the 
Belgians by stories of atrocities committed against 
the German soldiers, hunted the stories to their 
source in hospitals and elsewhere, proved them to be 
baseless and denounced them as such in Vorwaerts. 

But it is in his resistance to the war itself that 
Dr. Liebknecht has revealed his true mettle. While 
those of his fellow Socialists who opposed the war 
walked out of the Reichstag when the war credits 
were voted on December 2, he remained to utter his 
protest. The President would not allow him to speak, 
and when he handed in his speech in writing the 
President refused to insert it in the records. But the 
speech remains and reading it we cannot wonder that 
the Kaiser dare not let his people see it. For it de- 
nounces the war as having been " prepared by the 
German and Austrian war parties, acting together in 

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the darkness of half-absolutism and secret diplomacy, 
with the intention of getting ahead of their adver- 
saries." The cry against " Tsarism " was an imposture. 
" Germany, the partner of Tsarism, the most con- 
spicuous example of political reaction, has no mission 
as a liberator of nations. The liberation of the Russian 
and German people must be the work of themselves." 
His conclusion will stand as one of the most famous 
indictments in history. 

"Under protest against the war; against those who are 
responsible for it and have caused it ; against the capitalistic 
purposes for which it is being waged; against the plans of 
annexation; against the violation of the neutrality of Bel- 
gium and Luxemburg; against the absolute reign of the rights 
of war; against the social and political violation of their 
clear duty of which the Government and the ruling classes 
stand guilty, I shall vote against the war credits asked for." 

No less remarkable was his speech in the Prussian 
Diet in March, when the bureaucracy revealed " the 
naked truth that in Prussia everything remains as 
before." The war had opened with the promise that 
the infamous property suffrage in Prussia should be 
abolished; but with the soldiers securely in the 
trenches the oligarchy had repudiated the promise. 
The people were to die, but they were to have no 
reward. They were to liberate the Russians from 
Tsarism, but they were to remain political slaves 
themselves — slaves to the trinity of Militarism, 
Monarchy, and Property. This time Liebknecht was 
permitted to speak, but the Diet fled at his rising. 
They dared not stay to hear him tell how " our 
soldiers will clench their fists in the trenches " as they 
hear of their betrayal. 

The magnitude of that betrayal can hardly be 

exaggerated. Prussia is a despotism. The three-class 

suffrage so effectually excludes the people from 

representation that in the whole Diet there are only 

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Karl Liebknecht 

seven Socialists. Add to this the fact that the govern- 
ment is responsible not to Parliament but to the 
Kaiser and it will be seen how completely divorced 
the people are from the affairs of Government. And 
yet our Dr. Dillons tell us there is nothing to choose 
between the people and the tyranny which enslaves 
them. 

If this were true we might indeed despair. But it 
is not true. Vorwaerts knew it was not true when it 
courageously declared — for it had already been 
several times suppressed — that " democratic control 
by the people would have prevented the war." It 
is the crowned King of Potsdam, not the uncrowned 
King of Potsdam with whom we are at death grips, 
and until we appreciate that fact we shall not under- 
stand what this war is really about. It is not a war 
between this country and that, this people and that, 
this race and that, but between this ideal and that 
— between the ideal of despotism and the ideal of 
freedom — between absolutism and democracy, be- 
tween imperialism and national liberty. The parties 
to the quarrel have got so curiously mixed that this 
truth is a little difficult to see and sometimes even 
a little hard to believe. But it is the truth all the 
same, and in that truth is the one gleam of hope in 
the vast tragedy. 

We cannot surrender that hope of an ultimate 
reconciliation of the democracies, for without it human 
life on this planet would be poisoned for ever. It is 
true that at this moment, when we are under the 
shadow of that enormous crime of the Lusitania, it 
is difficult to imagine that we can ever again be on 
terms with the German people. And if that crime 
were their crime we could not be. But it is the crime 
of a system, not of a people. Even on the battlefield 
and at sea there have been glimpses that the men are 

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better than the devilish doctrine that employs them 
as its instruments. Has there been anything in the 
history of war more moving than those scenes in the 
trenches on Christmas Day? And the course of the 
struggle has been full of incidents of a similar kind, 
often trivial but often eloquent of the mutual good- 
will that cannot be entirely stifled even by the 
sulphurous atmosphere of war. The English people 
have been quickly responsive to such episodes, as 
in the case of Captain von Muller of the Emden. The 
reason is simple. There is no atmosphere so intoler- 
able, so desolating as that of hate. The healthy mind 
hates in spasms, but it lives by its affections. The 
man who is consumed by hate is not only a misery 
to himself, but a source of misery to all around him, 
not because of the menace he offers to our interests 
but because he defiles the atmosphere we breathe and 
debases the currency of our kind. We would give 
anything to see one spark of gladness leap from his 
thundercloud. And it is because Captain von Muller 
is a spark of gladness from the thundercloud of 
Germany that we made much of him. He has fought 
without hate and without bitterness, with chivalry 
and good temper, and he has shown that it is possible 
still to be both a brave man and a gentleman. 

Now there is a conviction in some minds, and 
nowhere more than in intellectual Germany, that in 
order to defeat your foe you must first hate him. 
I do not know whether the Kaiser's order about 
destroying " the contemptible little army " was 
authentic. It has been repeatedly denied and may 
be an invention. But there is no doubt about the 
stream of vitriol that flows from high places in 
Germany apparently to put fire into the hearts of 
the soldiers. The crude and vulgar appeal of the 
Crown Prince of Bavaria to his men is an example, and 
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Karl Liebknecht 

so also is the speech of Professor Sombart in which 
he has explained how profound, eternal, and universal 
is the hatred of the German for England and the 
English. It burns, he says, in the whole German 
people from the taxi-driver to the prince. It is 
spontaneous, elemental, rooted in the deepest depths 
of the German being — with much more frenzied 
nonsense of the same sort. 

In his sane moments he probably knows that there 
are no such things as eternal hatreds between nations, 
or hatreds rooted in elemental antagonisms. The 
conflicts between peoples proceed from conflicts 
between kings and chancelleries. Kant in his Perpetual 
Peace said that that ideal could never be attained 
until the world had got rid of thrones and was organ- 
ised on a democratic basis. And, though the dynastic 
war belongs to the past, the truth of that maxim is 
as unassailable to-day as when Kant uttered it. 

We have but to contrast the Republican United 
States with Germany, or the Republican France 
to-day with the France of the Second Empire to 
understand that it is not democracies who cherish 
eternal hates that flame into war, but ambitious 
rulers and incompetent ministers who blunder into 
war for their own schemes. Napoleon III. was hardly 
less criminally wrong than Bismarck in 1870 or than 
the Kaiser is to-day. 

We are asked to believe that there is an eternal 
feud between Slav and Teuton, yet we all know that 
the conflict between Russia and Germany is a diplo- 
matic conflict, and that if the lifelong policy of 
Bismarck had not been repudiated there would have 
been no collision with Russia. We ourselves have 
passed through the whole gamut of European alli- 
ances. We have fought against France and with 
France, against Russia and with Russia, against 

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Prussia and with Prussia, against Spain and with 
Spain, against the Turk and with the Turk. What 
had undying national hates or loves to do with these 
things? They were transient political creations, not 
imperishable racial tendencies. Hate is a personal 
thing and that is why there can be no enduring peace 
in a world which is subject to personal rule. Nations 
are not antagonistic but complementary. That is why 
Free Trade is a spiritual influence as well as an 
economic theory. It is a material expression of the 
religion of humanity. 

It is significant that these appeals to hate usually 
come from bookish persons, and especially from the 
professors who are so largely responsible for the 
philosophy that has driven Germany to madness. 
Whenever we come down to the authentic word of 
the soldier himself we find that it breathes none of 
the ferocity that issues from the professor who sees 
war only in the abstract and nations as pawns on 
his philosophical chessboard. The private soldier is 
merciless in battle. " I stuck a German through the 
body and shot a lot more," says a private of the 
London Scottish, writing to his parents about the 
famous charge. But he was only doing his duty. In 
normal conditions he would probably walk round a 
worm rather than tread on it, but now he has surren- 
dered his conscience to his country, and does the 
task imposed on him without flinching, though that 
task in other circumstances would be called murder. 

The point, however, is that he does his slaying 
without hate. Indeed, how should he hate? He lies 
with his fellows in the trench all day, waiting to 
shoot men who are lying in a trench a hundred yards 
away, and who are waiting to shoot him. He has 
never seen them before. He does not know their 
names or speak their language. All that he knows 
3°4 



Karl Liebknecht 

is that it is his business to kill them, just as it is their 
business to kill him. He is sorry for himself, and 
perhaps a little sorry for them, but duty is duty, and 
he does it. And if he charges he charges with the 
passion of victory, but not with the motive of hate. 
He no more hates the man he runs through than he 
hates the man from whom he takes the ball on the 
football field. 

This gospel of hate as the instrument of victory iff 
battle, indeed, is not the soldier's gospel at all, but 
the scholar's gospel and not seldom the gospel of the-' 
cleric. Perhaps it is hardly fair to quote General 
Lee as typical of the soldier, for he was not only 
one of the greatest generals but also one of the most 
saintly men who ever lived. But he represented the 
soldier's spirit, and his comments on hatred in war 
are true to the profession he adorned. When a minister 
in the course of his sermon had expressed himself 
rather bitterly as to the conduct of the North, Lee 
said to him, " Doctor, there is a good old book which 
says 'Love your enemies.' ... Do you think that 
your remarks this evening were quite in the spirit of 
that teaching? " On another occasion when one of 
his generals exclaimed of the enemy, " I wish these 
people were all dead," Lee answered, " How can you 
say so ? Now I wish they were all at home attending 
to their own business and leaving us to do the same." 
And he stated his feeling generally when he said, " I 
have fought against the people of the North, because 
I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South 
dearest rights. But I have never cherished bitter or 
vindictive feelings and have never seen the day when 
I did not pray for them." 

That is the spirit of the great general and it is the 
spirit of Carlyle's peasant of Dumdrudge. We may 
be sure that it is the spirit that pervades the battle 
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The War Lords 

that is raging so near to us day and night as we go 
about our business. And perhaps hardly less on the 
German side than our own. It was a German officer 
who wrote the most impressive protest that has 
appeared against the gospel of hate that is preached 
by professors and editors for the encouragement of 
soldiers. The letter which appeared in the Cologne 
Gazette deserves to be remembered in the history of 
the war for its note of dignity and sadness. 

" Perhaps you will be so good as to assist, by the publica- 
tion of these lines, in freeing our troops from an evil which 
they feel very strongly. I have on many occasions, when 
distributing among the men the postal packets, observed 
among them postcards on which the defeated French, English, 
and Russians were derided in a tasteless fashion. 

" The impression made by these postcards on our men is 
highly noteworthy. Scarcely anybody is pleased with these 
postcards; on the contrary, every one expresses his dis- 
pleasure. 

" This is quite natural when one considers the position. 
We know how victories are won. We also know by what 
tremendous sacrifices they are obtained. We see with our 
own eyes the unspeakable misery of the battlefield. We 
rejoice over our victories, but our joy is damped by the 
recollection of the sad pictures which we observe almost 
daily. 

" And our enemies have, in an overwhelming majority of 
cases, truly not deserved to be derided in such a way. Had 
they not fought so bravely we would not have had to register 
such losses. 

" Insipid, therefore, as these postcards are in themselves, 
their effect here, on the battlefields, in face of our dead and 
wounded, is only calculated to cause disgust. Such postcards 
are as much out of place in the battlefield as a clown is at 
a funeral. Perhaps these lines may prove instrumental in 
decreasing the number of such postcards sent to our troops." 

That is not the spirit of hate ; it is the spirit of true 
humanity. I think we should all like to feel that it 
reflects the soul of Germany and that the infamies 
that have made the blood of the world run cold are 
not the infamies of a people, but of a system. In any 
case we shall not answer infamy with infamy. " It 
makes one angry," said a distinguished clergyman 
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Karl Liebknecht 

to me, " to hear Churchill talking of fighting this war 
like gentlemen. How can we fight such a foe in a 
gentlemanly way ? " The primeval instinct of revenge 
is strong in all of us. We cannot read the story of 
Louvain, of Aerschot, of Roulers, of Senlis, of Dinant 
without feeling it boil within us. We want an eye for 
an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We want to see their 
towns in ruins and their people driven into beggary 
as they have driven the Belgians. We feel that crimes 
like theirs can only be wiped out by crimes as vast, 
that suffering such as they have inflicted can only 
be paid in suffering. 

And yet, if this struggle has one meaning more 
profound than any other it is this, that we are waging 
a war of civilisation against barbarism — a barbarism 
which is only more hateful because, in M. Cambon's 
phrase, it is " pedantic barbarism." Germany's 
crime is not to be measured by the visible wrong. It 
is a crime against the soul of the world. She has 
shamed humanity. She has outraged the sanctities 
which are the common heritage of all of us and has 
made the civilisation that men have won from the 
ages a hideous jest. We have to repair that wrong 
and to reaffirm the reign of law among men. But we 
shall not do it with the methods of barbarism against 
which we war. The punishment that is inflicted shall 
be adequate to the enormity of the crime, but it 
shall be the punishment of justice and not of revenge 
or hate. 

The best hope of the recovery of the world from 
the wounds of this war is in the deliverance of the 
German people from Kaiserism and that hope can 
best be measured by the significance of Karl Lieb- 
knecht. There are some people who see in him only 
a negligible figure, the equivalent of those who oppose 
the war in this country. But that is to ignore the 
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The War Lords 

fact that we live under a democratic system and are 
fighting for the existence of democracy, while Lieb- 
knecht lives under a despotism which is fighting for 
the maintenance and extension of despotism. If it 
were true that there is nothing to choose in this war 
between the ideal of this country and the ideal of 
Germany, there would be ground for the suggestion 
that Liebknecht is only a perverse person. But who 
will say that that is true? Who will say that it 
means nothing to the world whether Germany or 
the Allies win? Liebknecht knows that it means 
everything and he would rather see Germany re- 
deemed by defeat than Kaiserism enthroned over the 
earth. There are others who say that Liebknecht 's 
opposition is in some subtle way that they do not 
explain a pawn in the German game. If it were 
not so, they say, some means would have been found 
of suppressing him. But those who see in him a tool 
of the Kaiser know little of the man or of his career, 
and the fact that he is at liberty is the most conclusive 
proof of his influence even in the midst of the war u 

For if the Government thought they could risk 
imprisoning him he would have disappeared long 
ago. It would not be the first time that they had had 
him under lock and key. He made his reputation as 
a barrister in 1905 by his defence in the famous 
Konigsberg trial of the German Socialists charged 
with conspiracy on behalf of the Russian revolu- 
tionists and he followed this up with a fierce anti- 
militarist propaganda. For, like Bebel, he knew that 
no good would be done with Prussia until the military 
fetish was destroyed and with the true instinct of 
the reformer he aimed at the heart of the tyranny. 
His reward was eighteen months' imprisonment. 

But they could not suppress a man like Karl 
Liebknecht by putting him in prison any more than 
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Karl Liebknecht 

they could suppress his father in that way. When 
he came out Berlin celebrated the fact by electing 
him to the holy of holies of junkerdom, the Diet itself. 
And since then, and especially since his election at 
Potsdam to the Reichstag, his power has increased. 
With the death of Bebel — brave old Bebel of the 
merry eye and the impetuous eloquence — he became 
the foremost figure in the most powerful party in 
Germany, his opinions uncompromising, his honesty 
unquestioned, his courage equal to any occasion. 
He has less spaciousness and imagination than Jaures, 
whose death is the greatest personal calamity that 
has befallen Europe in this war — perhaps less gentle- 
ness than dwelt under the kindly exterior of old 
Wilhelm Liebknecht. But he has a clear and powerful 
mind, immense force of character, and a gift of scorn. 
" Have you read Roosevelt's articles on Socialism? " 
he was asked at the end of an interview when he was 
on his visit to America in 1910. " My dear sir, I 
will only discuss opinions worth while discussing," 
was his reply. It will be seen that he has taken the 
measure of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. The courage 
which enabled him, little more than a year ago, to 
make in the Reichstag that famous exposure of the 
corruption practised by Krupps — an exposure which 
led to the trial and sentence of high officials — has now 
found a larger field of activity. 

The two Kings of Potsdam will emerge from the 
war in a very different relationship from that of the 
past. The militarism that sustained the despotic rule 
of the Kaiser will be discredited and we hope in ruins. 
Upon its ruins Karl Liebknecht will stand as the most 
powerful democratic figure in Germany. Under his 
inspiration, it may be, his country will be no longer 
a menace to the world, but a bulwark of Liberalism 
in Western Europe. 

309 



PRESIDENT WILSON 

AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

The rupture between President Wilson and Mr. Bryan 
will be one of the great landmarks of the war. What- 
ever other significance the event may have, it is con- 
clusive evidence of the failure of German diplomacy in 
America. The importance of that failure can hardly 
be exaggerated. Behind the struggle of the armies in 
the field there has been another struggle, hardly less 
important, for the sympathy of the neutral world. 
In this secondary theatre, the high hopes with which 
the Kaiser started on his great adventure have been 
disappointed. His main expectation, of course, was 
that the swift and overwhelming triumph of his arms 
would stampede the neutral world and bring it to his 
side, if not through sympathy at least through fear 
and self-interest. But he did not rely only on the 
suasion of success. He set in operation also the 
formidable machinery of the most unscrupulous 
diplomatic system extant. 

What has been the result? There were four main 
spheres of operation — the Balkans, Italy, Scandinavia, 
and the United states. In one sphere alone, Turkey 
and the Balkans, has he succeeded, and he has suc- 
ceeded there for three reasons, the failure of the Allies 
to formulate a clear and decisive appeal to the Balkan 
States, the German influences in the courts, and the 
susceptibility of so complicated a situation to those 
corrupt arts which the Wilhelmstrasse has carried to 
such perfection. But that is his one success. Scandi- 
navia, in spite of its fears of Russia, has stood firm 
against the Kaiser's cajoleries and threats ; Italy has 
310 



President Wilson 

entered the war on the side of the Allies, and now the 
United States has brought his policy of diplomatic 
hectoring and bluff to the challenge of a courteous but 
decisive "No." 

The Kaiser has made many miscalculations about 
nations and about men, but no greater miscalculation 
than that which he has made in regard to President 
Wilson and the United States. He is not alone in that. 
There has been a good deal of ignorance on the same 
subject in this country. In the early stages of the war 
there was a mischievous clamour against the United 
States in a section of the Press which has never quite 
got rid of the idea that America is only a rather 
rebellious member of our own household, to be 
patronised when it does what we want and lectured 
like a disobedient child when it doesn't. President 
Wilson was assumed, in these ill-informed quarters, 
to be a timid, academic person, so different from that 
magnificent tub-thumper, Mr. Roosevelt, who would 
have been at war with Mexico in a trice and would, 
it was believed, have plunged into the European 
struggle with or without excuse. 

If there was misunderstanding here on the subject 
we cannot be surprised that the Kaiser blundered so 
badly. He, too, believed in the " schoolmaster " view 
of Woodrow Wilson. A man who had refused such a 
golden opportunity of annexing Mexico must be a 
timid, invertebrate person who had only to be bullied 
in order to do what he was told. Moreover, was there 
not that great German-American population to serve 
as a whip for the Presidential back? One person in 
every five German born or of German descent, ready 
to play the game of the Fatherland, ready to ally him- 
self with the Irish-Americans in order to bring the 
whole Government of the country to heel or disaster. 
And so he did not send the polite, the gracious, the 
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The War Lords 

supple Prince Biilow to Washington. That courtly 
gentleman was dispatched to Italy to charm the 
Italian nation into quiescence. For America he needed 
another style of diplomacy, and he sent thither the 
stout and rather stupid Herr Dernberg to let President 
Wilson and the Americans know that Germany was a 
very rough customer and would stand no nonsense. 

It was a fatal blunder — the blunder of a people who 
have been so blinded by materialism that they do not 
seem to have so much as the consciousness that there 
is such a thing as moral strength on earth. No one 
who had followed with intelligent understanding the 
career of Woodrow Wilson could have doubted that 
he had to deal with a man of iron, a man with a moral 
passion as fervid as that of his colleague, Mr. Bryan, 
but with that passion informed by wide knowledge and 
controlled by a masterful will — a quiet, still man who 
does not live with his ear to the ground and his eye on 
the weathercock, who refuses to buy popularity by 
infinite handshaking and robustious speech, but comes 
out to action from the sanctuary of his own thoughts, 
where principle, and not expediency, is his counsellor. 
Please do not sniff at principle. It is one of those old- 
fashioned things which is a little out of favour with 
our pragmatic young men; but the statesman that is 
without it is as dangerous as the mariner who is with- 
out a compass. The peril of the democracy in all 
countries, and in this as much as any, is that it is so 
easily fooled by the unscrupulous adventurer whose 
life is an assertion of the Candidate's Creed — 

" I don't believe in princerple, 
But oh, I du in interest " — 

the sort of gentleman who, with a great gift of 
demagogic speech, lives on the emotions of the crowd 
and can only be said never to have deserted a principle 
because he never had a principle to desert. 

312 



President Wilson 

It is because no man in a conspicuous position in 
the democratic world to-day is so entirely governed 
by principle and by moral sanctions that President 
Wilson is not merely the first citizen of the United 
States, but the first citizen of the world. Mistakes, no 
doubt, for he is human, but they have never been the 
mistakes of a weak man, most certainly they have 
never been the mistakes of a political gambler or of 
one who has ever been touched by the sordid motives 
of ambition. To suppose that such a man, the head 
of such a country, was to be terrorised by " big talk " 
was the silliest misreading of his character. Courage, 
not the courage that gambles on the public emotions, 
but the courage that takes its stand on moral grounds, 
has been the capital note of his career. As President 
of Princeton University he had come into public 
prominence by his determination to save that great in- 
stitution from being the monopoly of wealthy idlers. 
" Dollars or brains " — that was the issue, and he 
fought for brains. The " dollars " won and he resigned ; 
but the millionaires had a costly victory. They had 
saved Princeton for the princes of the pork trade, but 
in the end they found they had made its President 
the head of the nation. 

People, in fact, have always been making the 
Kaiser's mistake about Woodrow Wilson, always 
assuming that he was " only a schoolmaster " and 
could be used or brushed aside as the occasion de- 
manded. And his singular simplicity and lack of 
ostentation strengthen the illusion, for there is nothing 
that so mystifies the bully and the rogue as the quality 
of modesty. He cannot understand that a man may 
be strong without always talking about his muscle. It 
was the famous duel with ex- Senator Smith of New 
Jersey that revealed Mr. Wilson to the larger world. 
He had resigned his place at Princeton, and the great 
3*3 



The War Lords 

party " boss " who was in very bad odour thought it 
would be a good stroke of business to get back to the 
Senate under the cover of Woodrow Wilson's unsullied 
name. He would get him nominated as Governor of 
New Jersey and later exact his own price. But when 
the nomination came Mr. Wilson had a preliminary 
condition. If he was to stand as the Democratic 
nominee for the Governorship the discredited " boss " 
must not be associated with him as Democratic can- 
didate for the Senate. Mr. Smith, pulling the strings 
behind, agreed. He was sure that if he could get Mr. 
Wilson's consent to save the Democratic cause, he 
could break the " schoolmaster " to his will when he 
had got him in harness. There are few more dramatic 
stories of public life than the events that followed — 
Smith putting up a man of straw for the Senate ; then, 
Wilson safely elected, revealing his whole battery and 
demanding the retirement of the man of straw and the 
Senatorship for himself; Wilson denouncing his can- 
didature and beating him ignominiously out of the 
field. The years of the Governorship that followed are 
historic. There had never been such a cleansing fire 
in State government and from that apprenticeship 
Woodrow Wilson emerged with a reputation unlike 
anything else in America and his election to the 
Presidency in opposition to Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. 
Taft was a convincing proof of the sound instinct of 
the American people for the man of character. 

As President, his achievements in internal policy 
have been as remarkable for their magnitude as for 
their courage and their wisdom. He has been as 
conspicuous for deeds as President Roosevelt was for 
words. His speeches have the brevity of Lincoln, some- 
thing of that great man's force, still more of the note 
of Burke. His speech in introducing his measure 
bringing the United States within sight of his ideal 
3i4 



President Wilson 

of Free Trade occupied only eight minutes; but the 
most striking of his utterances was the noble speech 
in which, defying the popular sentiment, he brought 
the dispute with this country on the Panama Canal 
to an end. That speech will live among the supreme 
expressions of great statesmanship. 

Throughout the war his attitude has conformed to 
the historic tradition of the United States of non-inter- 
vention in European affairs. This attitude laid him 
open to attack from both sides. He was assailed 
because he did not enter his protest against the 
atrocities in Belgium, and it is at least arguable that 
he would have done well to have initiated a neutral 
court of inquiry. But the chief attack has come from 
the side of Germany, which has realised that the 
neutrality of the United States has meant, in fact, that 
all its resources are at the disposal of the Allies, who 
have command of the sea. To stop the supply of 
munitions to this country has been the chief object 
of the hectoring policy of Germany, which culminated 
in the crime of the Lusitania. President Wilson's 
line has been unyielding. The trade of America is open 
to all nations, and it is not his duty to check that trade 
in one channel because the German navy has failed 
to keep it open in another. That would not be 
neutrality : that would be intervention in the interests 
of Germany. 

It is on this policy that the breach with Mr. Bryan 
has come. Mr. Bryan is a wonderful son of the plains, 
primitive, elemental, with a great gift of speech, the 
religious fervour of a field preacher, a certain naivete 
that makes him always charming if sometimes a jest, 
and a passion for the undiluted gospel of non-interven- 
tion. That he has been at issue with Mr. Wilson has 
been long known, but the extraordinary personal 
authority of the President has held him in check. 
3i5 



The War Lords 

When the hot gospeller of righteousness was beaten by 
Mr. Wilson as the Democratic nominee he fell entirely 
under the sway of his more instructed and more 
masterful rival, who on his election made him his chief 
Minister. Mr. Bryan, who has the moral passion of 
John Bright without Bright's intellectual power, has 
borne the restraints of office with difficulty and the 
chief business of the President has been to bring his 
starry emotions within the orbit of practical politics. 
He has hitherto succeeded and I have reason to know 
that the " managing " of Mr. Bryan will make one of 
the most amusing stories in the by-ways of politics. 

Now he has gone out to preach peace on any terms. 
He demands that the Government shall refuse to allow 
the American trader to supply munitions of war, in 
theory, to any one, but, in fact, to the Allies, and also 
the prohibition of the right of American citizens to sail 
in British ships. In short, he repudiates his famous 
declaration on munitions, which he signed but which 
no doubt the President inspired, and stands for the 
full acceptance of the German demands. President 
Wilson will not buy peace on these ignoble conditions. 
He is as anxious as Mr. Bryan to maintain peace; he 
is as loyal to the traditions of the fathers of the great 
Republic ; but he realises that the world has changed 
and that the United States can no longer be hermetic- 
ally sealed against the external nations. This war is, 
ultimately, a war for the Government of the world. If 
Germany wins, the Kaiser's dream of a universal 
throne will be accomplished, for every nation, and the 
United States among the rest, will live under the 
sanction of the Prussian sword. The Monroe doctrine 
itself is, by a strange irony, at stake. It was designed 
—as the converse of the policy of non-intervention in 
European affairs — to preserve the Americas from 
European attack. But the victory of Germany would 
316 



President Wilson 

make the Monroe doctrine waste paper. The South 
American republics would fall to the Kaiser and the 
United States would no longer be the unchallenged 
guardian of the peace of the Americas, but would have 
to face the menace of a German South America. In a 
word, the fate of the great Republic is in the balance as 
truly as, though less directly than, the fate of Europe. 
It is a mercy for the world, but most a mercy for 
the United States that in the struggle for the Demo- 
cratic nomination the amiable dreamer was defeated 
by the statesman. What would have happened if Mr. 
Bryan had won we now see. President Wilson under- 
stands what is at stake. He knows that surrender to 
the German demands would not only be a humilia- 
tion to his country beyond all parallel, but that finally 
it would assuredly mean the end of the American 
democracy and all the ideals for which it stands. In 
refusing to yield an inch on the rights of American 
citizens to work for whom they like and travel how 
they like he is defending the sacred ark of freedom. 
He will not go to war if war can be avoided with 
honour; but the integrity of the United States is his 
supreme concern and it is safe in his hands. The 
American people are with him. They have been in 
sympathy with the Allies from the beginning and 
every incident of the war, culminating in the crime of 
the Lusitania, has deepened that sympathy. Now 
even the German-Americans are alarmed. They see 
that they have to make their choice — that they 
cannot be Americans and Germans, that they cannot 
in the final test have two loyalties. The hyphen must 
go. And there is abundant evidence that it is going. 
The victims of the Lusitania did not die in vain, and 
in the end the United States stands with practical 
unanimity behind the great man whom the Kaiser 
set out so confidently to browbeat into obedience. 
3*7 



M. VENIZELOS 

In the great tragedy that has taken the world for its 
stage, there are many minor dramas which pass almost 
unnoticed, not because they are insignificant but 
because they are overshadowed by the central theme. 
We have no attention to spare for the by-play. And 
yet that by-play has a vital bearing upon the main 
struggle. It may even turn the scales of victory or 
defeat. It was only in his heel that Achilles was 
mortal; but it was enough. 

It is for this reason that the conflict between 
M. Venizelos and the King of Greece, which has 
resulted in the retirement of the great statesman, 
is of profound importance. It is a disaster to Greece, 
but it is much more than that. It is one of the worst 
blows that the cause of the Allies has yet sustained in 
the war. The heel of the European Achilles is the 
Balkans, that disturbed region which is so largely the 
source of the trouble and the support of which to either 
side would be so decisive a factor in the struggle. So 
far only two of the five powers in the Balkans (three if 
we include little Montenegro) are engaged in the war, 
the Serbians on the side of the Allies, the Turks 
on the side of the German Alliance. For nine months 
the three other powers, Rumania, Bulgaria, and 
Greece, have remained neutral. Had they intervened 
on the side of the Allies the end of the war would have 
been hastened, for Italy would have entered the 
conflict earlier and the isolation of the Austro- 
German position would have been complete. 

The failure of these powers to intervene is due to 
complex causes. Primarily it is due to that tragic 
3i8 



M. Venizelos 

episode, the second Balkan War, which left Bulgaria 
broken, defeated, and nursing a fierce hatred, no 
longer of the Turk, but of her Christian neighbours, 
Greece, Serbia, and Rumania. It is not necessary here 
to attempt to apportion the blame for the collapse of 
the Balkan League that led to the second war and the 
Treaty of Bucharest. It is enough to deal with its 
fatal consequences. With the Bulgarian people con- 
sumed with thoughts of vengeance on their neigh- 
bours, only a miracle could bring about joint action 
on the war between them and Rumania and Greece. 
And without joint action there was little hope of any 
action, although both in Rumania and Greece there 
was an overwhelming popular demand for war. 

Now there was one man and one man only who was 
capable of working the miracle. It was M. Venizelos, 
the Greek Premier. M. Venizelos is the greatest 
statesman in Europe to-day. That is a large claim, 
but history will ratify it. His public career, so far as 
Europe is concerned, extends over only five years, 
but in that time he has revealed to the world one of 
the most remarkable personalities in the political 
history of Europe. He has been compared to Cavour, 
to Gambetta, to Bismarck. The fact is significant 
of the impression he creates. You look for his parallel 
only in the ranks of the greatest. But the comparison 
with Bismarck, while true in regard to his relation to 
Greece, is monstrous in relation to the man. Brutal 
force was the dominant note of Bismarck. There is 
force in Venizelos too, a high courage that led him 
out into the mountains of Crete at the head of his 
rebels when Prince George of Greece, the High 
Commissioner, dared to play the autocrat in that 
little island. 

But it is force governed by a spiritual motive and 
a humane wisdom that suggest the Lincolns and the 
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Mazzinis rather than the Bismarcks. The mere 
presence of the man is singularly assuring. I recall 
that famous dinner given to the Balkan delegates in 
London in the midst of the first Balkan War when 
all our hopes were so high, and I remember how the 
personality of the man stood out from the common- 
place figures of his colleagues. And the impression 
was deepened by personal contact. He pervades the 
atmosphere with the sense of high purpose and noble 
sympathies. It is not his strength that you remember, 
but a certain illuminated and illuminating bene- 
volence, a comprehensive humanity, a general 
friendliness of demeanour. He is in temperament 
what one may call a positive — a man of sympathies 
rather than antipathies, winning by the affections 
more than by diplomacy or cunning. He is singularly 
free from the small ingenuities and falsities of politics, 
and in all circumstances exhibits a simple candour 
and directness so unusual as to be almost incredible. 
But for the conviction that his personality conveys, 
you would believe that such frankness was only the 
subtle disguise of an artful politician. It is instead 
the mark of a man great enough to be himself, to 
declare his purposes, to live always in the light, 
fearless of consequences. Whether his opponent 
be king or people, he will tell the truth, without 
bitterness but without hesitation, for he is neither 
demagogue nor courtier. We have seen with what 
firmness of mind he can face the throne — that throne 
which he has done more than any man to make 
secure. But he can face the people with equal firmness. 
Right at the threshold of his career in Greece he 
showed this quality in circumstances of unusual 
difficulty. The lamentable condition of public affairs 
had reduced the country to despair. It seemed to 
have fallen among thieves. Its public life was corrupt, 
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M. Venizelos 



M. Venizelos 

its government a system of " Rotativist " plunder, 
its taxation crushing to the poor, its army (as the 
war with Turkey in 1897 had shown) a sham and its 
navy a shadow. The position culminated in the 
military coup d'etat of 190S, but the military League 
could not build the foundations of a new Greece, and 
the country cried out for a man. But where was he to 
be found in the midst of the little nests of political 
intriguers w T ho had brought Greece to chaos? 

It was then that the mind of the country turned to 
Crete. In that island a remarkable figure had appeared 
in politics. He was a Cretan, but a Cretan of Athenian 
origin, whose grandfather had fled from Greece a 
hundred years or so ago to escape the tyranny of the 
Turk. In the troubled events that led to the liberation 
of Crete from the Turk and its right of self-government 
under the suzerainty of the Sultan, this young 
barrister had been the leader of his people 'and he 
became the President of the new Cretan National 
Assembly. But the advent of Prince George, the 
brother of the present King of Greece, as High Com- 
missioner was followed by a serious conflict between 
him and his Minister. Prince George aimed at govern- 
ing the island despotically, but Venizelos had not 
overthrown the despotism of the Turk in order to set 
up a new despotism from Greece. He resigned ofhce, 
put on his military uniform, and headed the insurrec- 
tion of 1905 w T hich led to the fall of Prince George and 
his disappearance to the seclusion of Paris, the refuge 
of all discredited potentates. Venizelos returned to 
power under a new T High Commissioner, M. Zaimis, 
but the magic of his personality and the fame of his 
exploits had fired new hopes in Greece, and in the 
confusion of 1909, when the throne was trembling and 
the very nation seemed in dissolution, the democracy 
of Greece appealed to the man who had saved Crete to 
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come and be its saviour also. And the late King 
George, pocketing the outrage that had been put 
upon his son by this man, wisely joined in the appeal. 

He came and Greece hailed him as its deliverer ; but 
he had smooth words neither for the King nor for the 
people. " We must tell the truth," he said, " to those 
above and those below." The Crown, he declared, had 
usurped too large a place in the functions of Govern- 
ment. And the democracy cried " A Daniel, a Daniel." 
But when the populace sought to convert his Re- 
visionary Chamber into a Constituent Assembly 
which the King could not dissolve he stood by his 
bond. In front of his hotel in Athens the crowd 
corrected his word " Re visionary " by shouting 
"Constituent! Constituent!" but he simply pro- 
ceeded with his speech, repeating " Re visionary " 
as though he was deaf to the storm of interruption. 
And at last the crowd, in sheer astonishment at this 
rebuke from a popular orator, were silenced. They 
had found a leader, not a demagogue. 

That is the man. More than any one in politics 
to-day, he seems to come into affairs with a large 
inspiration outside all the petty considerations of 
parties and creeds, outside even mere national con- 
siderations. He is not a Cretan only, nor a Greek 
only ; he is first and foremost a great European, He 
has that detachment of mind that is the strength of 
Sir Edward Grey, but he fuses it with an instructed 
idealism that adds the quality of the prophet to the 
wisdom of the statesman. In Greece he has wrought 
a miracle so swift, so convincing, that the popular 
reverence for him has something of idolatry 7 mixed 
with it. He is regarded as the saviour, the regenerator, 
not of Greece only, but of the Hellenic idea. He found 
the country a by-word for the squalor of its public 
life and for the vulgar Chauvinism of its politicians. 
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M. Venizelos 

He has redeemed its administration, ennobled its 
spirit, doubled its area. In two short years he gave 
it a new and stable constitution, set the throne on its 
feet, reformed the army and navy, swept away the 
iniquitous taxation of the poor, redressed the miser- 
able lot of the peasantry. 

But the greatest gift he offered to the Greeks was 
a larger and nobler vision of their relations to their 
neighbours. The old bitter quarrel with Bulgaria 
yielded to his fine doctrine that " we have not only to 
think of our own rights, but of the rights of others." 
He sought the regeneration not only of Greece, but of 
the Balkans, and largely under his inspiration there 
came to birth that Balkan League which wrought the 
overthrow of the Turk, and seemed to have cleared 
the clouds from South-Eastern Europe for ever. The 
miserable collapse of that splendid enterprise was 
the work of men like King Ferdinand and clumsy 
mock-Bismarcks like Daneff, his Prime Minister. 
How chivalrously Venizelos strove to avert the dis- 
aster is known. He risked even his authority in 
Greece by the concessions which he offered, for they 
included Kavala itself; but his magnanimity was in 
vain. Bulgaria had the Prussian idea, and it fell in 
its pursuit. And it was its disappointment that kept 
the Balkan States out of the ranks of the Allies when 
the great war came. 

But Venizelos very nearly repeated his miracle — 
very nearly rebuilt the Balkan League and threw its 
sword into the scale of the Allies. Why did he fail? 
" Kings," said a wise man who had known much of 
Courts, " are always the same. They never forget and 
they never forgive. They think of events only in the 
light of their own dignity." King Constantine is a 
popular monarch. He has fought two successful wars 
(with the army that Venizelos recreated), and he has 
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The War Lords 

many excellent qualities. But he has not forgotten the 
indignity that Venizelos inflicted on his house in 
turning his brother out of Crete. He owes his throne 
to the statesman; but he owes him a grudge also 
and a grudge is always more enduring than gratitude. 
Moreover, his wife is a sister of the Kaiser and his 
sympathies in the war are naturally opposed to those 
of his people. Did he not, after the second Balkan 
war, flatter the Kaiser by saying that Greece owed its 
military success to Germany? It was a grotesque 
fable, for it was the French whom Venizelos had 
called in to reform the Army just as it was the English 
to whom he turned to reform the Navy. But there 
was this measure of truth in the flattery that the Greek 
officers had graduated in the German military 
academies. And this fact brings us to another cause 
of the defeat of Venizelos. The military leaders, un- 
like the people, are pro-German. That is natural. 
The militarist mind is always Prussian. It would be 
Prussian here if we were not fighting Prussia; for its 
unchanging doctrine is that of government by the 
sword. Finally, there was ranged against Venizelos 
all the old crowd of tricky politicians whom he had 
swept out of power. They did not care about the war, 
or the Balkans, or democratic ideas. All they wanted 
was revenge on the great man who had stopped their 
pilfering politics and regenerated Greece and the 
Greek name. 

So while Venizelos was working to blot out the 
grievances of Bulgaria, rebuild the League, and bring 
the Balkan powers with a united front to the support 
of the Allies and of the cause of the small nations, his 
enemies were working for his defeat. His scheme was 
simple. With that magnanimity which dwells outside 
racial bitterness and is prepared to make great 
sacrifices to achieve great ends, he proposed to sur- 
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M. Venizelos 

render Drama, Kavala, and Sarishaban to Bulgaria, 
with proper safeguards from the Allies in the case of 
failure and with the understanding that Greece would 
be rewarded after the war by the cession of the vilayet 
of Smyrna in Asia Minor which is pre-eminently 
Greek. Moreover, Bulgaria's grievance in regard to 
Macedonia was to be redressed by Serbia. It was a 
bold policy, calculated to arouse much opposition in 
Greece, which regards Kavala as the key to Salonika. 
But the prestige of Venizelos is so high that he would 
have carried the country with him. 

Indeed, it seemed in February that his policy had 
won at home if not abroad. It was still doubtful 
whether Bulgaria could be reconciled on his terms 
for Ferdinand was pro-Austrian in sympathy, and 
though he would follow the line of personal advantage 
it was not yet clear that that line was on the side of 
the Allies. And his people certainly had reason for 
regarding the gifts of the Greeks with distrust. They 
had behaved badly in the second war, but so had 
their neighbours in Serbia and the settlement of 
Bucharest was a flagrant wrong. They knew that they 
held the key of the Balkan position, that their inter- 
vention on either side would be a vital factor and 
they were not disposed to sell themselves cheap. 
The}' had borne the brunt of the burden in clearing the 
Turks out of the Balkans and they had got little for 
their pains and now they were disposed to drive a hard 
bargain and to get their own back out of the necessities 
of the belligerents. They did not want promises, but 
the immediate " delivery of the goods," and after the 
experience of the Treaty of London that attitude was 
not unnatural. 

But Venizelos' wise action had paved the way to 
a basis of understanding and a decisive step by the 
Allies would do the rest. Their diplomacy unfortun- 
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ately was vitiated by Russia's own interests and 
ambitions in the Balkans, but a striking military 
success would serve. And there was no success which 
would be so impressive as the fall of Constantinople. 
It would put the Turks out of action, open up the 
Black Sea, and bring the Balkan States together on 
the side of the Allies. It was from these considerations 
that the idea of the attack on the Dardanelles sprang. 
It was a daring military adventure, but its motive 
was political. It was viewed with much disfavour by 
the Admiralty, which I think took the view that at 
all events so great an enterprise should not be entered 
on until military support could be given to the naval 
operations. But the objections were over-ruled and the 
experiment of an exclusively naval attack was made 
with disastrous results. 

It is probable that it would not have been made in 
that form and at that time had not the Allies believed 
that Venizelos would " win through." They were 
confident of large military support from Greece and 
perhaps gambled a little heavily for a stake so valuable 
as the support of all the Balkan States. That Veni- 
zelos did not consciously mislead goes without saying. 
He knew that he could answer for the Government of 
which he was the head and for the nation of which he 
was the trusted leader. He did not know that he could 
not answer for the king and that at the critical 
moment he would be deserted. Nor had he any 
ground for suspicion on the point. His scheme was, 
he says, endorsed by the king; but it was delayed, and 
in the meantime the intriguers, political and military, 
secured his Parliamentary overthrow. He resigned 
and the new Government of Gounaris set themselves 
to employ every device to delay an appeal to the 
country which they knew would result in the over- 
whelming return of the great Liberal leader. With 
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M. Venizelos 

clumsy recklessness they sought to destroy him. 
They declared that his proposal to give Kavala to 
Bulgaria was not authorised by the king. 

With characteristic directness, Venizelos appealed 
to King Constantine to clear his reputation and to 
defend him from insult. The king did neither. He 
did not even reply personally to the greatest servant 
that the throne of Greece has ever had. He replied 
through the Government and his reply was to the 
effect that Venizelos had misunderstood him. The 
retort of Venizelos was instant. He could not bandy 
words with his sovereign; but neither could he 
remain in public life under the accusation. He 
announced his retirement from politics as the only 
service that remained for him to perform for the king 
and the only course due to his own good name. 

And now the little people who have temporarily 
triumphed are delaying the election to the last moment 
and gerrymandering the constituencies in the hope 
of finally extinguishing the great popular leader. They 
might as well try to extinguish the sun in the heavens. 
Venizelos is mightier in Greece at this moment than 
he has ever been. His sun has not set: it is only 
momentarily eclipsed. There is hardly a constituency 
in the land that would not rejoice to return him. He 
will be torn from his retirement in spite of himself 
and he will come back with a nation behind him. For 
Greece knows that in him she has touched greatness, 
and that through him she has caught a vision of a 
nobler destiny than has been hers since the Turk 
brought his blight upon the Balkans. Venizelos is for 
the Allies for no mean thing. He is for them because 
he knows that with all their deficiencies they stand 
for freedom, for the moral law in the world against the 
law of Krupp and that in their triumph is the hope of 
liberty, of democracy, and of the small nationality all 
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The War Lords 

over the world. And Greece is with him. It will be 
with him to-day more than ever, for there is no 
country, not even Bulgaria, not even Italy, in which 
the news of the fall of a Gladstone in battle will echo 
with more thrilling power or where it will carry more 
convincingly the assurance that the cause for which he 
has fallen is the cause of eternal justice and deathless 
liberty. 




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